Directing government subsidies to social services such as health care is expected to bring about positive external/social benefits and improve equity in access to health services. In general, government spending on health is envisioned to improve the well-being of beneficiaries and enhance their...

The year 2015 is the "finish line" for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). What should the post-2015 goals look like for Africa? The goal of ending extreme poverty remains paramount. Globally, the World Bank has set goals to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to promote shared prosperity in...

The paper discusses critical land issues in the Philippines and assesses the integration of those issues in the national development agenda and poverty reduction strategies. It covers issues related to agriculture, forest and urban lands, land administration and management and government...

Many rural poor people in developing countries depend on agriculture and are highly influenced by climatic change. Hence, sustainable livelihood approaches are used at both policy and project level to initiate new poverty reduction activities and modify existing activities to improve livelihood...

Der entwicklungsökonomische Diskurs ist aktuell geprägt durch eine kontroverse Debatte zwischen Jeffrey Sachs und William Easterly. Der Beitrag rekonstruiert beide Ansätze aus ordonomischer Perspektive. Er argumentiert, dass eine auf Kooperation angelegte Semantik vergleichsweise besser...

We use a rapid introduction of an unconditional cash grant (child support) in South Africa to estimate the marginal propensity to consume and earn out of a permanent change in unearned income. We find that the marginal propensity to earn is about to -0.25 for single-adult households, and...

Development of the social dimension of Europe was advanced by the Lisbon Summit in March 2000, and this paper considers the future direction of social policy. The first step towards a social agenda could take the form of benchmarking, based on national competencies in this field, with Member...

In the EU there is growing concern about poverty among children, and among families with children. In most OECD countries, income poverty among children now exceeds that among the elderly, who traditionally were the demographic group most at risk of poverty (Jäntti and Danziger, 2000). However,...

This paper addresses the question of the institutional flexibility of three major European welfare states. Using Data from the second and fifth wave of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we measure first how effectively the German, British and Italian welfare state have responded changes in...