This report seeks to identify changes in
human development outcomes in a period of deepening
decentralization and to suggest how the country's
decentralized governance structure will be improved to
increase access to, as well as the quality of, relevant
services. The report states decentralized governance
structure helped facilitate improvements in service delivery
and human development outcomes. The report argues that while

The importance of the tertiary road
sector in contributing to economic development and poverty
alleviation efforts cannot be understated. In Albania,
forty-nine percent of rural producers have stated that a
lack of adequate transportation, primarily good roads, was
their biggest marketing problem. In Bosnia and Herzegovina,
there is discontent about the quality of the regional and
tertiary roads, with complaints about the low quality of

Four years have passed since the
Millennium Development Goals sharpened the focus on
measuring the results of development-not the number of
projects undertaken or the dollars spent, but the
improvements in people's lives. The emphasis on
quantitative targets and the requirement for monitoring
progress on country poverty reduction strategies have
increased the demand for statistics. And that showed us how

There is a general consensus that most
of the poor in developing countries are net food buyers and
food price increases are bad for the poor. This could be
expected of urban poor, but it is also often attributed to
the rural poor. Recent food price increases have increased
the importance of this issue, and the possible policy
responses to these price increases. This paper examines the
characteristics of net food sellers and buyers in nine

Indonesia stands at the threshold of a new era and at an important juncture of its history. After the historic economic, political and social upheavals at the end of the 1990s, Indonesia has started to regain its footing. The country has largely recovered from the economic and financial crisis that threw millions of its citizens back into poverty in 1998 and saw it regress to a low-income status. Recently, it has once again crossed the threshold, making it one of the world's emergent middle-income countries.

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 report assesses the ongoing
transition in Orissa. It examines how and why the successes
were achieved. It attempts to outline the dimensions of the
challenge ahead, as Orissa marches forward into the second
phase of policy and institutional reforms, building on its
improved fiscal position to deliver rapid and inclusive
growth. It highlights key issues and binding or soon-to-be
binding constraints. The concluding section identifies

This housing policy in developing
countries, conjectures and refutations article discusses
housing policy in developing economies. It examines recent
research findings in light of earlier arguments as to the
benefits of more market-oriented approaches. It also looks
at whether the recommendations of earlier work have been
refuted or developed in subsequent analyses and policy
measures. In particular, it reviews the empirical analysis

Based on a literature review and expert
interviews, this paper analyzes the most important climate
impacts on development goals and explores relevant
institutions in the context of mainstreaming climate
adaptation into development assistance in Mozambique.
Climate variability and change can significantly hinder
progress toward attaining the Millennium Development Goals
and poverty aggravates the country's climate

This study is part of the second phase of a long-term programmatic work on poverty in Mexico, in three phases being carried out by the Bank at the request of the Government of Mexico.

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 is the result of a technical
and economic assessment of the fisheries sector in Cape
Verde. While originally focusing particularly on the
long-term development and governance strategy of the sector,
the authors, faced with the increasingly apparent need for
fundamental restructuring of the sector, redirected their
attention to what has become an assessment of how to create
a viable fishing sector that can effectively reach realistic