Around the world, countries are becoming urbanized at an astonishing pace. As countries develop economically, their economies shift from mainly rural and agrarian to increasingly urban and nonagricultural. This rural-urban transformation presents both opportunities and challenges for...

This report, Europe and Central Asia - Missing Women in the South Caucasus : Local perceptions and proposed solutions, discusses research conducted on skewed sex ratios in the South Caucasus. It discusses (i) the factors that encourage sex selection in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, (ii)...

This study answers two questions about power sector reform in Moldova. First, did reform affect the poor and the non-poor differently? Second, are household consumption patterns different for private and public distribution networks? The study concludes that reforms have not disproportionately...

Poverty studies typically focus on people who live below the poverty line. Few studies have examined how people are able to not only move out of but also stay out of poverty. The fifteen, country study, moving out of poverty: success from the bottom up, by Deepa Narayan, Lant Pritchett, and...

In 1999, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) introduced poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) as a condition for highly indebted countries to receive debt relief under the HIPC initiative. Since then, PRSPs have become a condition for aid to International Development...

This paper uses selected case studies to illustrate some of the complex relationships that link employment and social cohesion. For example, despite harsh working conditions, retail garment manufacturing contributed to the transformation of gender relationship in Bangladesh by giving women the...