Facing rapid demographic, social and economic transformation, China has taken steps to extend and strengthen the urban Minimum Living Standard Scheme (MLSS). The MLSS is a social assistance programme initially focused on the chronically poor, but later extended to the long-term unemployed. The...

This policy brief emphasises that: evidence shows that large-scale, well-designed social-transfer programmes can support micro-level growth processes; social transfers enable investment in human capital and productive assets, laying the foundations for future growth; social transfers can improve...

This working paper presents a review and analysis of the Kalomo Pilot Social Cash Transfer Scheme, initiated in November 2003 by the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services (MCDSS) of the Republic of Zambia, in cooperation with German Technical Assistance (GTZ). The Zambian context...

This is a continuation of an earlier paper (2005) by the author which dealt with policy implications based on the work done by CPRC in India. We do not yet have a map of chronic poverty in India, but have an approximate idea of numbers and communities where it has a significant presence. We have...

This article argues that the extreme poor warrant specific analytical and policy focus. It attempts to identify the extreme poor in rural Bangladesh by devising sensitive targeting indicators that are effective in minimising leakage to the non-poor while ensuring broad coverage of the target...

This paper explores whether child labourers come from, not only the poor, but also the poorest households in Bangladesh or not. The paper also tries to explain what determines the participation of children in labour force. A comparison has also been made between macro statistics and micro survey...

Poverty has different and varying manifestations. In fact, Hulme et al (2001) proposes a five-tiered categorisation of poverty. This identifies the always poor, usually poor, churning poor, occasionally poor and never poor. The first two categories are chronically poor, the next two transitory...

The distinction between chronic or extended duration poverty and transient poverty is rarely made in the substantial literature on poverty in India. Determination of poverty as chronic or temporary requires that the same households be tracked over time through a panel data set and/or use of life...

India experienced high economic growth in the 1990s. Some earlier studies, which attempted to identify the influence of growth on poverty dynamics in the country by including growth variables among the factors affecting the incidence of and transition from poverty, concluded that growth is not...