This study builds a profile of the
status of poverty and vulnerability in Malawi. Malawi is a
small land-locked country, with one of the highest
population densities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and one of the
lowest per capita income levels in the world. Almost 90
percent of the population lives in rural areas, and is
mostly engaged in smallholder, rain-fed agriculture. Most
people are therefore highly vulnerable to annual rainfall

The purpose of this guidance note is to
bridge precisely identify how to implement World Bank
resettlement policies in the context of infrastructure
projects affecting South Asian largest cities, with a focus
on the impacts on poor areas and slums. The guidance note is
intended as a tool to help decision makers in Government
agencies and in the Bank, particularly in respect of the
main aspects: 1) methods to assess and evaluate resettlement

At the outset of China's reform
period, the country had a far higher poverty rate than for
Africa as a whole. Within five years that was no longer
true. This paper tries to explain how China escaped from a
situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed
and unpopular policies. While acknowledging that Africa
faces constraints that China did not, and that context
matters, two lessons stand out. The first is the importance

The measurement of inequality of
opportunity has hitherto not been attempted in a number of
countries because of data limitations. This paper proposes
two alternative approaches to circumventing the missing data
problems in countries where a demographic and health survey
and an ancillary household expenditure survey are available.
One method relies only on the demographic and health survey,
and constructs a wealth index as a measure of economic

The spike in food prices between 2005
and the first half of 2008 has highlighted the
vulnerabilities of poor consumers to higher prices of
agricultural goods and generated calls for massive policy
action. This paper provides a formal assessment of the
direct and indirect impacts of higher prices on global
poverty using a representative sample of 63 to 93 percent of
the population of the developing world. To assess the direct

The demand for verifiable evidence of
results and impacts of development agricultural programs and
projects is growing. However, most of the indicators that
development practitioners have traditionally used in
tracking progress toward achieving projects' objectives
focus on the workings of the development operation itself.
These performance indicators relate mainly to lower-level
inputs and outputs and are used to populate management

This assessment of poverty and
inequality comes at an important juncture for Kenya. The
December 2007 elections and subsequent pronouncements of the
newly formed Grand Coalition have underlined the salience of
these issues to ordinary Kenyans, and for policy makers. The
violence in early 2008 highlighted the importance of
addressing poverty and inequality as major goals in their
own right, but also for instrumental reasons, as major goals

This paper provides evidence from one of
the poorest countries of the world that the property rights
matter for efficiency, investment, and growth. With all land
state-owned, the threat of land redistribution never appears
far off the agenda. Land rental and leasing have been made
legal, but transfer rights remain restricted and the
perception of continuing tenure insecurity remains quite
strong. Using a unique panel data set, this study

This joint working paper lays out a
rationale and strategic framework for improving food
security and managing food-price shocks in the Arab
countries. The paper does not provide country specific
policy and project recommendations. Such recommendations
will follow from the country by country application of the
framework, taking into account each country's political
and cultural preferences, resource endowments, and risk

Seasonal poverty in Bangladesh, locally
known as monga, refers to seasonal deprivation of food
during the pre-harvest season of Aman rice. An analysis of
household income and expenditure survey data shows that
average household income and consumption are much lower
during monga season than in other seasons, and that seasonal
income greatly influences seasonal consumption. However,
lack of income and consumption smoothing is more acute in

Food insecurity and income poverty are
rampant in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thirty-one percent of
children under the age of five are malnourished and some 72
percent of the population lives on less than US$2 day.
Forty-one percent lives on less than US$1 day. The
impoverished and hungry are concentrated disproportionately
in rural areas and rely mainly on the consumption and sale
of agricultural produce for their food and income. Africa

This report " Country Social
Analysis (CSA) " focused on ethnicity and development
in Vietnam is a provocative analysis of marginality in
contemporary Southeast Asia. It seeks to understand the
macro social and political processes, and provides an
analysis of how social, political, and cultural factors
influence the opportunities and constraints to more
equitable, inclusive development. This study provides