South Asia has attracted global
attention because it has experienced rapid GDP growth over
the last two decades. What is not so well known is that
South Asia is the least integrated region in the world.
South Asia has opened its door to the rest of the world but
it remains closed to its neighbors. Poor market integration,
weak connectivity, and a history of friction and conflict
have resulted in two South Asias. The first South Asia is

This paper assesses the impact of
work-related migration by males on the labor market behavior
of females in Nepal. Using data from the 2004 Nepal
household survey, the authors apply the Instrumental
Variable Full Information Maximum Likelihood method to
account for unobserved factors that could simultaneously
affect males' decision to migrate and females'
decision to participate in the labor market. The results

Bangladesh represents a success story
among developing countries. Poverty incidence, which was as
high as 57 percent at the beginning of the 1990s, had
declined to 49 percent in 2000. This trend accelerated
subsequently, reducing the poverty headcount rate to 40
percent in 2005. The primary contributing factor was robust
and stable economic growth along with no worsening of
inequality. Respectable GDP growth that started at the

This report reviews Community Driven
Development (CDD) projects in Lao People's Democratic
Republic (PDR) to determine their effectiveness in
channeling resources to communities for poverty reduction.
The study examines three CDD projects in depth: the Poverty
Reduction Fund, the Village Investment for the Poor (both
supported by the World Bank), and the Government-financed
Village Development Fund. Through close analysis of these

The rural roads program, overseen by
Provias Descentralizado (subdivision of Peru's Ministry
of Transportation and Communications), began in 1995, and
has received funds from the Peruvian Government, the World
Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is a
national program for the rehabilitation and maintenance of
roads that link rural communities and villages with
secondary and principal roads, and through these, with towns

Balochistan offers some of the best
assets for development. Balochistan is generously bestowed
with natural and locational resources. It possesses the
largest land area of any province of Pakistan, proving vast
rangeland for goats, sheep, buffaloes, cattle, camels and
other livestock. Its southern border makes up about two
thirds of the national coastline, giving access to a large
pool of fishery resources. As a frontier province, it is

From what was historically known as
'Arabia Felix', a land of prosperity and
happiness, Yemen has become the most impoverished among the
Arab countries. The government of the united Yemen, formed
in 1990, has launched so far three five-year economic reform
plans with the goal of restoring Yemen's prosperity.
Have these efforts succeeded? What policies are needed to
further reduce poverty? The poverty assessment report aims

The overall objective of the
Comprehensive Assessment of the Agricultural Sector (CAAS)
is to provide an evidence base to enable appropriate
strategic policy responses by the Government of Liberia
(GoL) and its development partners in order to maximize the
contribution of the agriculture sector to the
Government's overarching policy objectives. Given the
strong relationship between growth in agricultural

The Philippines by virtue of its geographic circumstances is highly prone to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tropical cyclones and floods, making it one of the most disaster prone countries in the world. This report seeks to document the impacts of natural disasters on the social and economic development of the Philippines; assess the country's current capacity to reduce and manage disaster risk; and identify options for more effective management of that risk.

The chapters, or "policy
notes," of this report, creating the foundations for
equitable growth in Mexico 2006-2012, are dedicated to
trying to solve parts of the puzzle as to why Mexico's
level of economic development has failed to approach the
level of its NAFTA trading partners, or the level of a
typical OECD member state. Each chapter of this new report
uses the 2000 policy notes as a reference. In this report,

This book is designed to contribute to
the government's thinking on how best to translate
broad MKUKUTA (the government of Tanzania's National
Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty) policy
objectives into practical tactics and programs well suited
to Tanzania's economic priorities and to the removal of
key institutional and infrastructure bottlenecks. The book
aims to respond to three fundamental questions: (a) what

This report seeks to present micro
evidence on how environmental changes affect poor
households. It focuses primarily on environmental resources
that are outside the private sphere, particularly commonly
held and managed resources such as forests, fisheries, and
wildlife. The objectives for this volume are three-fold. It
is first interested in using an empirical data-driven
approach to examine the dependence of the poor on natural