Many countries around the world have implemented subsidies for utility consumption, especially in the case of water and electricity. Most subsidies take the form of a lifeline or increasing block tariff, whereby households that consume less pay less on a unit basis. The idea is that households...

Burundi is still experiencing a major food crisis. One important element that will help to avoid new episodes of violence is revised agricultural policies that support sustainable food security. Food crops and livestock supply 91 percent of agricultural GDP and the major livelihood for most...

Burundi is still experiencing a major food crisis. One important element that will help to avoid new episodes of violence is revised agricultural policies that support sustainable food security. Food crops and livestock supply 91 percent of agricultural GDP and the major livelihood for most...

Governments aiming to improve the education and health status of their populations can increase the level of public spending allocated to these sectors, or improve the efficiency of public spending. Since increasing spending is often difficult due to the limited tax base of most developing...

The strategy of the Zedillo Administration for the reduction of poverty relied on both broad-based social expenditures and targeted poverty programs. Broad-based social expenditures are devoted to the areas of social security and healthcare, education, job training, and housing. Targeted poverty...

While there are different estimates of poverty in Mexico, there is general agreement that poverty is widespread, and that the reduction of poverty should be a key area of focus for the new Administration. Beyond lack of income, poverty is a complex and multidimensional phenomena which affects...

While Mexico's southern states differ substantially in terms of their migration profile, many of the issues confronted by the three states are the same. In this paper, we focus on five questions: (a) How large are migration flows, and what can be expected in the future?; (b) To what extent does...

Rawls and Wresinski are both concerned about the poor, but their approaches regarding what is needed to achieve social justice are very different. This paper focuses on the issue of the knowledge and motivation necessary to fight poverty. We suggest that the Wresinski approach advocating an...

This paper presents some analytical techniques to help policymakers gauge the technical and fiscal feasibility of development targets. While each of the techniques discussed below has deficiencies, taken together they have proven very useful in providing a sense of realism to target setting. The...

Unlike Mexico as a whole, the south (that is, the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca) may well not reach many of the MDGs. The objective of this paper is to document this assertion and discuss some of the constraints toward reaching the MDGs, as well as some initiatives recently taken to...