One major concern of the Third World, with its emotional and moralistic overtones, is the production and distribution of food. Unfortunately, however, the world food situation is very complex and any over-simplification is counter-productive. This article confronts the myths with the facts...

The World Bank oil, gas and mining unit, in its capacity as a driver for best practice related to extractive industry contributions to poverty alleviation, has a strong interest in the sustainable development of mine-impacted communities. As part of the growing global expectation that the...

Financial technology, or simply ‘fin-tech', is increasingly seen as one of the key tools to facilitate poverty reduction and local economic development. One article in particular by Tavneet Suri and William Jack published in the leading publication Science has played a hugely influential role...

The study seeks to answer four questions that summarize the fundamental issues in the international debate about the capacity of social funds to improve beneficiaries' living conditions: o Do social funds reach poor areas and poor households? Do social funds deliver high-quality, sustainable...

Services are failing poor urban and rural people in the developing world, and poverty remains concentrated in rural areas and urban slums. This state of affairs prevails despite prolonged efforts by many governments to improve rural and urban services and development programs. This book focuses...

Banks in the United States originate $100 billion in community development loans every year and hold similar amounts of community development investments on their balance sheets. Using hand collected data from thousands of Community Reinvestment Act performance evaluations, the effect of the...

The two sectors of community development and health have long worked in the same neighborhoods, but they have not always worked together. This is starting to change, due in part to a growing recognition among health experts of the social, economic, and environmental factors that drive health...

Decentralisation, which sends power and resources from the Central to local governments, comes with several theoretical promises. One such promise is the improvement in local service provision. However, achieving these theoretical promises of decentralization has been a big challenge in most...