Poor people derive most of their income from work; however, there is insufficient understanding of the role of employment and earnings as a linkage between growth and poverty reduction, especially in low income countries. With the objective of providing inputs into the policy discussion on how...

For humanitarian reasons and the concern for households' economic and health security, the health sector is at the center of global development policy. Developing countries and the international community are scaling up health systems to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and are...

Disability is an important issue for the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Not only is a significant portion of their population either in poor health or disabled - with implications for labor force participation and productivity - but their aging demographics...

The last 10 years have seen a resurgence in interest and research around inequalities in the health sector. While a disproportionate share of the new research has focused on measuring inequality in the health sector, work is emerging on how to understand the causes of inequality and on...

Vietnam's successes in the health sector are legendary. Its rates of infant and under-five mortality are comparable to those of countries with substantially higher per capita incomes. Vietnam continues to be an over-achiever in the health sector according to data assembled in this book. Like...

Several economies in the Caribbean region, especially from the lower income group, are highly dependent on remittances. Between 1991 and 2006, the combined flows of total remittances reaching the Caribbean have seen almost a 17% average annual growth rate, surpassing USD 6billion in 2005 and...

A Development Emergency: the title of this year's Global Monitoring Report, the sixth in an annual series, could not be more apt. The global economic crisis, the most severe since the Great Depression, is rapidly turning into a human and development crisis. No region is immune. The poor...

The main objective of this report is to help policymakers in the Caribbean design an agenda of policy actions to accelerate trade integration and growth, and to reduce poverty. Each part of the report focuses on a key question and provides an in-depth analysis of the issues raised, laying the...

This book aims to raise awareness of how the International Benchmarking Network of Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET)can help utilities identify ways to improve urban water and wastewater services. It provides an introduction to benchmarking and to the objectives, scope and focus of IBNET...

Inequality in South Asia appears to be moderate when looking at standard indicators such as the Gini index, which are based on consumption expenditures per capita. But other pieces of evidence reveal enormous gaps, from extravagant wealth at one end to lack of access to the most basic services...