This Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper for the Kingdom of Lesotho presents a determined plan in pursuance of high and sustainable equity-based economic growth. It contains medium-term objectives and strategies to address the major challenges facing the country. These challenges include employment...

The Seventh National Development Plan of the Maldives envisages sustainable development with economic growth, social equity, environment protection, and good governance. The report assesses the policies and strategies needed to achieve the goals as well as the agencies responsible to implement...

Ghana’s current socio-economic development agenda is to attain middle-income status. The emphasis is on changing the structure of the economy by developing the private sector, diversifying the export base, and increasing agricultural productivity and rural incomes. The importance is on...

The MKUKUTA Annual Implementation Report (MAIR) is one of the outputs of the Tanzanian government’s monitoring system. The objective of this report is to contribute to all government reporting systems, which include output reporting by Ministries, Departments and Agencies, Local...

Mauritania’s poverty reduction strategy paper is based on a broadly participatory process and serves as the policy framework for the country’s economic and social policies. The focus is to accelerate economic growth and stabilize the macroeconomic framework, which benefits the...

The World Bank documents an inverse relationship between GDP per capita and child labor participation rates. We construct a life-cycle model with human and physical capital in which parents make a time allocation choice for their child. The model considers two features that have shown potential...

This paper presents the status report on Bangladesh’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Having prepared the Interim-PRSP (I-PRSP) in March 2003, the government of Bangladesh has set itself to a well-rounded process of preparing the full-blown PRSP by December 2004. That would...

This paper reviews the Third Progress Report 2002/03 for Tanzania’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. The report highlights what the government did during the past year in terms of policy developments, an assessment of the achievements and challenges, including the monitoring system. There are...

This paper examines Sierra Leone’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Sierra Leone’s PRSP considers a number of short- to medium-term challenges that should not only impact immediately on the living conditions of people but also lay solid foundations for addressing the...

Do the short and medium term adjustment costs associated with trade liberalization influence schooling and child labor decisions? We examine this question in the context of India's 1991 tariff reforms. Overall, in the 1990s, rural India experienced a dramatic increase in schooling and decline in...