Despite their increasing prominence in policy debates, little is known about gender inequities in non-agricultural labor market outcomes in rural areas. Using matched household-enterprise-community data sets from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, this paper documents and analyzes gender differences in the individual portfolio choice and productivity of non-farm entrepreneurship. Except for Ethiopia, women are less likely than men to become nonfarm entrepreneurs.

The objective of this paper is to
present a succinct and up-to-date review of the urban sector
in Egypt, with a focus on issues for which there is new
insight or emerging government interest. The two main themes
of the report are the challenges facing the urban sector and
the policy implications at various levels of government.
Some of the reports mains findings are: urbanization in
Egypt takes on forms and processes which are not well

Microfinance is often criticized for not
adequately addressing seasonality and hard-core poverty. In
Bangladesh, a program known as PRIME was introduced in 2006
to address both concerns. Unlike regular microfinance, PRIME
introduces a microfinance scheme that offers a flexible
repayment schedule and consumption smoothing, as well as
production, loans. It targets the ultra-poor, many of whom
are also seasonally poor, with a severe inability to smooth

The objective of this paper is to
present a succinct and up-to-date review of the urban sector
in Egypt, with a focus on issues for which there is new
insight or emerging government interest. The two main themes
of the report are the challenges facing the urban sector and
the policy implications at various levels of government.
Some of the reports mains findings are: urbanization in
Egypt takes on forms and processes which are not well

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,

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

This paper analyzes changes in
agricultural production and economic welfare of farmers in
rural Peru resulting from a large irrigation infrastructure
rehabilitation project. The analysis uses a ten-year
district panel and a spatial regression discontinuity
approach to measure the causal effect of the intervention.
While general impacts are modest, the analysis shows that
the project is progressive--poor farmers consistently

Many investments in infrastructure are
built on the belief that they will ineluctably lead to
poverty reduction and income generation. This has entailed
massive aid-financed projects in roads in developing
countries. However, the lack of robust evaluations and a
comprehensive theoretical framework could raise questions
about current strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the
second Cameroonian national household survey (Enquete

Standard approaches to decomposing how
much group differences contribute to inequality rarely show
significant between-group inequality, and are of limited use
in comparing populations with different numbers of groups.
This study applies an adaptation to the standard approach
that remedies these problems to longitudinal household data
from two Indian villages -- Palanpur in the north, and Sugao
in the west. The authors find that in Palanpur the largest

Policymakers in developing countries are
increasingly recognizing the necessity of developing
strategies and identifying specific investment programs to
reduce spatial differences in living standards within their
national territories. Choosing among alternate policy
instruments to support spatial convergence is not
straightforward. Should the focus be social policies that
support human development in lagging regions and promote

Uganda needs to focus on improving the
effectiveness of its roads investment strategy for rural
Uganda and improving the manner in it procures and
implements roads contracts at the national level. In recent
years the Government of Uganda has shifted the priorities in
its national development strategy as there was accumulating
evidence that infrastructure deficiencies had become a
binding constraint to economic growth and poverty reduction.

Bangladesh is one of the world's
poorest countries. Nearly 80 percent of the nation's
140 million people reside in rural areas; of these, 20
percent live in extreme poverty. Geographically, many
low-lying areas are vulnerable to severe flooding, while
other regions are prone to drought, erosion, and soil
salinity. Such an unfavorable agricultural landscape,
combined with mismanagement of natural resources and