Jan Vandemoortele, Santosh Mehrotra and Enrique Delamonica argue that children have the right to basic social services and that poverty reduction must start with ensuring that children have a good start in life. Development (2000) 43, 16–22. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1110111

Public social services, such as basic health care, represent the effective option for the poor, especially in the rural areas of low-income countries. The quality of such services are at present extremely deficient, largely due to resource constraints and lack of political will to make them...

Child labour is widespread in home based manufacturing activities in the informal sector in most developing countries. This form of child labour will not attract the penal provisions of a country’s laws banning child labour. This paper draws on surveys carried out in five Asian countries –...

The emphasis on growth has led to an under-emphasis of the micro-impacts of macro-economic policies. Whether growth reduces income-poverty is crucially dependent on its impact on employment. This paper addresses the question: what kind of productive employment can an economy generate that...

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Ensuring accountability of local functionaries for effective delivery of basic social services has been a perennial problem of development. Since the poor have limited prospects of 'exit', 'voice' alone works to ensure effectiveness of service delivery. Accountability of lower-level...