The transitional economies of the Former Soviet Union have enjoyed an extraordinary period of growth and poverty reduction between 2000 and 2007 and this occurred in concomitance with significant increases in private and public transfers to households. The article assesses the relative...

The article develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the allocation of aid. The authors call this concept the income lever. Making use of tax and distributive theory, the...