Tunisia emerges today the only success story of the Arab Spring revolution that swept the Arab world five years ago. This poverty assessment seeks to learn from the pre and post revolution periods with a view of avoiding the repetition of past mistakes in the future. Specifically, it will...

Vietnam has achieved remarkable success in reducing poverty while controlling inequality. The country's broad-based growth reflects the government's focus on developing labor-intensive export sectors while investing heavily in human capital that saw the country exceed its peers. However, gains...

After the return to democracy, Ghana achieved significant economic growth and poverty reduction. However, in recent years, the rate of poverty reduction has slowed, becoming insignificant after 2012. The largest reduction in poverty, 2 percent per year, was reached from 1991-1998. Subsequently,...

Ethiopia's economy has grown rapidly over the last two decades, leading to significant national poverty reduction, but there were significant differences in the pace and nature of poverty reduction across Ethiopia's eleven regions. Based on the national poverty line, poverty decreased from 46...

Burkina Faso is a West African Sahelian landlocked country covering 274,200 square kilometers. In January 2015, the population was estimated at just over 17.9 million. The capital city is Ouagadougou. The country has a tropical climate with two very distinct seasons: dry and rainy. In the rainy...

Bangladesh has made good progress in reducing poverty over the past decade despite the series of external shocks which have routinely affected the country. Poverty fell from 49 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2005, propelled by respectable economic growth and relatively stable inequality. These...

Uganda's progress in reducing poverty from 1993 to 2006 is a remarkable story of success that has been well told. The narrative of Uganda's continued, albeit it slightly slower, progress in reducing poverty since 2006 is less familiar. This was a period in which growth slowed as the gains from...

Moldova has experienced rapid growth and increases in living standards in the past decade. The economy has grown by an average 5 percent a year in the past 15 years, while the national poverty rate declined from 26 percent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2014; there are sharp declines observed in the early...

This report provides a dynamic poverty assessment of Mauritania between 2008 and 2014, the time period included between the last two household budget surveys (the Enquete Permanente sur les Conditions de Vie des menages (EPCV). Its aim is not to provide a comprehensive poverty profile for either...

The report consists of four chapters. Chapter one profiles the trends in growth, household consumption, and poverty rates at the national level between 2004 and 2013. Descriptive statistics of consumption and selected poverty indexes are presented and a profile of the characteristics of the poor...