In 2008 the Government of Pakistan
agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to
increase the tax/Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio by 3.5
percentage points over the medium term. This commitment has
rekindled the debate regarding the agricultural income tax.
Advocates of an agricultural income tax argue that the
sector remains protected by political interests, while
opponents to such a tax maintain that agriculture is already

Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in
India, has 170 million inhabitants who represent 16.2
percent of India's population. Uttar Pradesh (UP) is
classified as one of the 'lagging states of India'
for its slow growth, low human development indicators and
high concentration of the poor. UP occupies an important
position in India because of its size and as a determinant
of the country's overall progress. UP has continuously

A number of development partners,
including the World Bank, have been actively supporting the
health sector in Afghanistan since 2003-04 (1382 AC).
Collectively, they invested more than $820 million between
2003 (1382 AC) and 2008-09 (1387 AC) and played key roles in
supporting the government in reshaping the country's
health sector. This support continues, with all partners
starting new projects aimed at further strengthening the

The Government of Lao PDR (GoL)
announced that its 7th national socio-economic development
plan, covering 2010 through 2015, will focus on achieving
the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and exiting least
developed country status by 2020. To achieve these goals,
one of the priority areas in the 7th National Socio-Economic
Development Plan (NSEDP) is to reduce vulnerability to
shocks by providing and improving social safety nets (SSN).

Ethiopia's rural non-farm sector is
significant and participation is increasing. The sector is
particularly important for women and poorer households.
Non-farm enterprises provide income-earning opportunities to
those lacking alternative options and supplementary income
for farming households. This report is organized into seven
chapters. The first chapter lays the analytical groundwork
for assessing the rural investment climate in Ethiopia and

Reducing poverty continues to be one of
the main priorities of the Government of Albania. Currently,
Albania has an ample platform to provide social protection
to its citizens through social insurance, social assistance
and employment programs. However, these programs are not
efficiently linked to each other, which can lead to unclear
and occasionally overlapping roles among the programs. Among
these social protection programs, Ndihma Ekonomike (NE) is

Measuring the poverty and distributional
impact of the global crisis for developing countries is not
easy, given the multiple channels of impact and the limited
availability of real-time data. Commonly-used approaches are
of limited use in addressing questions like who are being
affected by the crisis and by how much, and who are
vulnerable to falling into poverty if the crisis deepens?
This paper develops a simple micro-simulation method,

The report is structured as follows.
Section one examines the contribution of the rural economy
to the national economy, the structure of the farm and
non-farm sectors and their relative importance. Section two
describes policies and constraints affecting the wider rural
economy including, reforms in macro-economic management,
recent external influences and financial services before
discussing those which relate specifically to agriculture

The authors analyze five rounds of
National Sample Survey data covering 1983, 1987/8, 1993/4,
1999/0, and 2004/5 to explore the relationship between rural
diversification and poverty. Poverty in rural India declined
at a modest rate during this period. The authors provide
region-level estimates that illustrate considerable
geographic heterogeneity in this progress. Poverty estimates
correlate well with region-level data on changes in

The agri-food sector is an important
part of the Ukrainian economy. Agriculture could make an
even larger contribution to economic growth and the vitality
of rural areas in Ukraine than is currently the case.
Ukraine has the agro-climatic potential to be a major player
on world agricultural markets. Agricultural competitiveness
in Ukraine also suffers from inadequate systems to test and
document food product quality and food safety.

An increase in sea surface temperature
is evident at all latitudes and in all oceans. The current
understanding is that ocean warming plays a major role in
intensified cyclone activity and heightened storm surges.
The vulnerability of coastlines to intensified storm surges
can be ascertained by overlaying Geographic Information
System information with data on land, population density,
agriculture, urban extent, major cities, wetlands, and gross

The authors use recent data from the
2006 National Family Health Survey of India to explore the
relationship between religion and demographic behavior. They
find that fertility and mortality vary not only between
religious groups, but also across caste groups. These groups
also differ with respect to socio-economic status. The
central finding of this paper is that despite their
socio-economic disadvantages, Muslims have higher fertility