This paper analyzes the distributional impacts of trade reforms in rural areas of Bangladesh. The liberalization of trade in irrigation equipment and fertilizer markets during the early 1990s has led to structural changes in the agricultural sector and a significant increase in rice productivity. A resulting increase in output has been associated with a decline in producer and consumer rice prices of approximately 25 percent.

This article reviews trends in poverty,
economic policies, and growth in a sample of African
countries during the 1990s, drawing on the better household
data now available. Experiences have varied. Some countries
have seen sharp drops in income poverty, whereas others have
witnessed marked increases. In some countries overall
economic growth has been pro-poor and in others not. But the
aggregate numbers hide systematic distributional effects.

A major problem in the Europe and
Central Asia (ECA) agricultural sector and rural areas
during the transition was the breakdown of the relationships
of farms with input suppliers and output markets. The
simultaneous privatization and restructuring of the farms
and of the up- and downstream companies in the agrifood
chain have caused major disruptions. The result is that many
farms and rural households face serious constraints in

This issues paper discusses a gender
assessment exercise carried out in April-June 2005. It
provides the government of Mali and its partners with
proposals aimed at improving policies and activities that
promote gender equity and equality (GEE). The study is
divided into four sections: Section 1 presents the national
context within which the study falls; Section 2 deals with
the gender profile in Mali; Section 3 addresses the

Using cross-country and panel regressions, the authors show that financial sector development significantly reduces undernourishment (hunger), largely through gaining farmers and others access to productivity-enhancing equipment, translating into beneficial income and general effects. They show specifically that a deeper financial sector leads to higher agricultural productivity, including higher cereal yields, through increased fertilizer and tractor use. Higher productivity in turn leads to lower undernourishment.

This paper provides an institutional
record of the implementation experiences of all the four
World Bank-assisted National Emergency Employment Program
(NEEP)/National Rural Access Program (NRAP) projects and
evaluates the impact on community members of the improved
rural access that the projects have provided. It is based on
desk reviews of project documentation, supervision mission
notes, field visits to communities in rural areas, and

In 1993, in response to persistent
unemployment, and rising poverty and social unrest, the
government of Albania introduced an anti-poverty program,
namely Ndihma Ekonomike; in 1995 it was extended to all poor
households. This paper estimates the separate effects of
participation in this income support program and the old-age
pension program on objective and subjective measures of
household poverty. The analysis uses the nationally

This handbook intends to document the
essential steps for best practice in the design, and
implementation of resettlement action plans. Given that
involuntary resettlement entails both the physical
displacement of peoples, and the disruption of their
livelihoods, social development specialists at the
International Finance Corporation (IFC), worked together
with project developers to ensure consistent, and pragmatic

For Rwanda, one of the poorest countries in the world, trade offers the most effective route for substantial poverty reduction. But the poor in Rwanda, most of whom are subsistence farmers in rural areas, are currently disconnected from markets and commercial activities by extremely high transport costs and by severe constraints on their ability to shift out of subsistence farming. The constraints include lack of access to credit and lack of access to information on the skills and techniques required to produce commercial crops.

This report represents a snapshot of a
dialogue between the State of Piaui and the World Bank and
focuses on the strategies and actions the State Government
may wish to adopt. Piaui's challenge is to build
institutions that address its weaknesses and exploit its
strengths. Addressing weaknesses implies continuing with
efforts to improve education, raising productivity in
small-scale agriculture, increasing public participation in

The importance of distributional issues in policymaking creates a need for empirical tools to assess the social impact of economic shocks and policies. This paper reviews some of the modeling approaches that are currently in use at the World Bank and other international financial institutions. The specification of these models is dictated by the issues at stake, the knowledge about the nature of the process involved, and the availability and reliability of relevant data. Furthermore, shocks and policies have macroeconomic, structural, and distributional implications.

Despite the impressive performance of
the economy in the last five years, however, poverty in
Albania has remained high, and per capita income, at around
US$1,230 in 2002, has remained one of the lowest among
transition economies. In an effort to adopt policies to
share widely the benefits of growth, and reduce poverty, the
Government outlined a poverty alleviation strategy in the
2000 Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP), and