The aim of the scoping study was to gain
an understanding of the productive activities slum dwellers
engage in that rely on energy services and the potentials
and challenges of slums in Ghana regarding access to modern
energy services and income generation from productive
activities. The objective of the ESMED-EAfUP (Energy Sector
Management Assistance Program - ESMAP/SME Development -
Energy Access for the Urban Poor) programme is 'to

When deciding who should receive welfare
benefits with the aim to increase household well-being, it
is necessary to understand the effects of the distribution
of power within the households at which the aid is directed.
Two primary household models have been used to study
intra-household bargaining and decision making: the unitary
model and the collective model. The unitary model seems to
fit Pakistan's context because the prevailing

The purpose of this study is to provide in one place a set of papers that were written at various points in time over the last four years on poverty and the response to the recent economic crisis in Liberia. More precisely, the objective of the study is twofold. First it is to provide a basic diagnostic of both consumption-based poverty and human development (especially education and health) in the country using the 2007 CWIQ (Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire) survey.

This summary report is the culmination
of a comprehensive, more than a year-long, collaboration
between the World Bank, Fiji Department of Social Welfare
(DSW), Fiji Islands Bureau of Statistics (FIBOS) and AusAID.
It reflects various activities undertaken under the work
program that was agreed upon with the Government of Fiji
(GOF), with financial support provided by AusAID under the
Externally Funded Output (EFO) agreement with the World

Gender-poverty-environment links: a
focus on the links between gender disparity, poverty and
environmental degradation is increasingly recognized as a
key strategy for improving the lives of poor women and men.
Acknowledging the ways in which relationships between the
environment, society and the economy are gendered opens
space for new approaches to poverty reduction, environmental
conservation and gender equality. The Social Development

Indian remains one of the countries
wherein a lot of efforts are still required to eliminate the
practice of open defecation. In rural areas, open defecation
though reduced in scale continues to be a socially and
culturally accepted traditional behavior largely. Low
awareness of the potential health and economic benefits of
better sanitation and hygiene practices, perception of high
costs of having a toilet, the perceived convenience of open

International migration has increased
rapidly in recent decades and this has been accompanied by a
remarkable increase in transfers made by migrants to their
home countries. This paper investigates the effect of the
rural economic growth brought about by migration and
remittances on Nepal's Himalayan forests. The authors
assemble a unique village-panel dataset combining remote
sensing data on land use and forest cover change with data

Welfare losses from the 2008 food price
crisis in Pakistan are deepening the gap between poor and
non poor populations and further increasing inequality
between the provinces. To estimate welfare losses, the
reduction in caloric availability at household level is
measured. The analysis of calorie intake by source supports
the notion that rural households were shielded from the
worst effects of the crisis by their capacity to grow their

Europe and Central Asia have suffered a
setback in economic growth because of the recent global
crisis, which revealed fundamental structural weaknesses
previously hidden by the prosperity before the crisis. The
major weaknesses are the large savings deficits, the lagging
reforms in the social sectors, and the deterioration in
competitiveness. Policies can address these weaknesses by
taking into account the role of the behavior of firms,

This report responds to the Government
of Cameroon's strong interest in strengthening its
social safety net system to support the poorest and most
vulnerable households during crises. It is grounded in
extensive discussions with government counterparts in a
collaborative and inclusive process. The report incorporates
detailed comments received from the government as well as
important donors and partners through two participatory

This overview summarizes the key
findings of the eight chapters and one policy note. It is
organized as follows. The first section provides a
background of Guangdong, while the second describes the
current situation of inequality in the province. Next is a
discussion of the potential impacts of the transfer of
industrial activities ('industrial transfer') in
mitigating regional disparity, followed by the

This issue of the Research digest
newsletter contains the following topics of interest: how to
move the exchange rate if you must; focus - urbanization and
poverty reduction; Turkey's export boom in the 2000s;
social protection, poverty, and the post-2015 agenda;
village India: the growing importance of the nonfarm sector;
incentive audits: a new tool for preventing financial
crises?; and, biodiversity and national accounting.