This book documents the experiences of men, women, and children in Armenia, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan as they struggle with the dramatic changes in lifestyle and extreme poverty that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Based on...

The purpose of this study, carried out in the Kyrgyz Republic in 1999, was to investigate the impact of socioeconomic change on the characteristics and functions of the social networks of poor and non-poor households in rural and urban communities. A better understanding of the role of informal...

Over the past five years, the World Bank has developed useful post-conflict strategies that better meet the unique needs of war-torn countries. The Local Initiatives Project (LIP) in Bosnia presents a new standard of responsive social development in the Bank. While it demonstrates the need to...

The Rural Poverty Alleviation Program in Northeast Brazil uses an integrated approach to social and economic analysis in tackling poverty at the community level. Key to the success of this program is the use of economic and social indicators to monitor changes in the community. The reform...

Resolving the pension crisis in Brazil has been neither straightforward nor technically easy. The World Bank provided technical assistance via diagnostic tools that assessed the impacts of current pensions at the state level. The analysis identified likely impacts various pension reform models...

The past 20 years have witnessed a growing disparity in health status indicators between urban and rural populations in China. The economic and social reforms that have accelerated the growth in GDP and personal income levels of the urban population have not trickled down to the rural areas....

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) Basic Education Pilot Project and the national India District Primary Education Project exemplify good social development practices. The pilot project in UP to assist girls to achieve better education proved so successful that it was scaled up to a national project. The...

The Indonesia Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Project (COREMAP) is the first operation supported by the World Bank to focus exclusively on coral reef ecosystems. COREMAP is being implemented in 10 provinces over 15 years, during which period the communities are given incentives,...