review recent evidence on the trends in household well-being in Africa during the 1990s. They draw on the findings of a series of studies on poverty dynamics that use the better data sets now available. The authors begin by taking a broad view of poverty, tracing changes in both income poverty...

There has been much debate about how much India's poor have shared in the economic growth unleashed by economic reforms in the 1990s. The authors argue that India has probably maintained its 1980s rate of poverty reduction in the 1990s. However, there is considerable diversity in performance...

Most empirical work on how growth affects poverty and inequality has been based on international panel data sets. Panels can also be used within a country, if the analysis is carried out at the regional level. The author does this for Bangladesh, where regional panel estimates indicate that...

The authors analyze the subjective perceptions of poverty in Madagascar in 2001 and their relationship to objective poverty indicators. They base their analysis on survey responses to a series of subjective perception questions. The authors extend the existing empirical methodology for...

The authors provide estimates of poverty at the regional level in India, spanning the 1990s. Such estimates have not been previously available due to concerns regarding non-comparability of the 1993-94 and 1999-2000 National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) household survey data. They implement...

The impact of macroeconomic crises on parents'investments in the human capital of their children is a widely contested issue. The author analyzes the effects of the profound macroeconomic crisis in Peru in 1988-92 on the schooling and employment decisions made by urban school-age children. He...

Few studies have examined the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty in a broad cross-section of developing countries. The authors try to fill this gap by constructing a new data set on poverty, international migration, and remittances for 74 low- and middle-income...

The authors provide evidence that women's non-farm activities help reduce poverty in two economically and culturally different countries, Ghana and Uganda. In both countries rural poverty rates were lowest - and fell most rapidly - for female heads of household engaged in non-farm activities....

Countries receiving debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative will be among the first to benefit from the new World Bank -- International Monetary Fund approach to strengthening the impact on poverty of concessional assistance in low-income countries. The new approach...

Many developing countries assign local governments increasing responsibilities in fighting poverty. This requires local social policy to go beyond the execution of centrally designed and funded education and health programs. Hence, local governments and their partners have both an opportunity...