Empowerment of those living in poverty is both a critical driver and an important measure of poverty reduction. It is the decisions and actions of poor people themselves that will bring about sustainable improvements in their lives and livelihoods. Inequitable power relations exclude poor people...

This volume represents some of the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Research Committee on Development Economics (Ausschuss für Entwicklungsländer) of the German Economic Association (Verein für Socialpolitik) held in Cologne, Germany, in July 2004. The meeting focused on the...

The embarrassing living conditions of more than one billion poor people in developing countries in combination with the increasing gap of living standards between the poor and the rich, has provided a strong motivation for development policy to change this situation. From its beginning, policy...