This paper analyses the effects of access to Rural Public Works (RPW) and the Public Distribution System (PDS), a public food subsidy programme, on consumption poverty, vulnerability and undernutrition in India drawing, on the large household datasets constructed with National Sample Survey...

HIV/AIDS is both a cause and a symptom of chronic poverty and requires new and innovative policy instruments and institutional structures to address its impacts. Focusing specifically on orphans, vulnerable children and the elderly, this paper explores the appropriateness of different social...

There is a growing consensus that vulnerability undermines growth and human development progress, and so social protection to prevent downward mobility and poverty is an important third policy leg. This paper argues that nowhere in the current mainstream policy discourse is there a strong or...

Primary education is widely perceived to have a key role in reducing poverty and is positively associated with development-related outcomes such as improving productivity. For girls in particular, it is highly correlated with improvements in health and reductions in fertility, infant mortality...

This paper considers the impact of cash transfer programmes for the old in Brazil and South Africa on poverty among households with older people. Using datasets collected specifically for the purpose, the paper constructs conditional and unconditional estimates of the poverty reduction capacity...

Although economic reform has brought remarkable progress in poverty reduction in Vietnam, the scale and depth of ethnic minority poverty in Vietnam presents one of the major challenges to achieving the targets for poverty reduction set out in the Socio-Economic Development Plan, as well as the...

In recognizing that poverty is 'multi-dimensional,' contemporary policy discourses – drawing on scholarship on ‘networks,’ ‘exclusion,’ and ‘culture’ – have made important (if often underappreciated) steps to incorporate insights from social and political theory, but these...

The distinction between transitory and chronic poverty has been highlighted in the research conducted by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre. While estimates of the incidence of poverty obtained from sample based studies provide insights into the prevalence of poverty and its severity at a point...

This paper examines the fracture points, or areas of weakness and failure, in social policy formation - from agenda setting through to policy formation and its legitimisation. It suggests why it is that despite clearly identified severe and widespread problems, which have been shown to drive and...

Often, the implementation of anti-poverty programmes has been evaluated on the basis of their outcomes rather than the process of implementation. Such methods of evaluation assume that good outcome indicators are the result of good implementation. This evaluation methodology assumes that the...