The Stages-of-Progress methodology helps examine households' movements out of poverty and into poverty. More important, it helps uncover the reasons responsible for these movements, thereby feeding directly into policy formulation. I present the steps in this methodology, discussing briefly some...

The gulf in living standards is widening between cities and rural areas of developing countries that have large rural populations. Legacy as well as emergent factors contribute to this trend. An old urban bias from colonial and post-independence times was supplanted by a newer metropolitan bias...

While social mobility in advanced economies has received extensive scholarly attention, crucial knowledge gaps remain about the patterns and determinants of income, educational, and occupational mobility in developing countries. Focusing on intergenerational mobility, we find that estimates...

National governance scores must be seen in light of large within-country variance. Not only being a rural village, but being located at a substantial distance from cities, has great importance for good governance. Analysis of household data from different parts of rural India shows how villages...

Twenty-four per cent of households in 36 village communities of Central and Western Uganda have escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but another 15 per cent have simultaneously fallen into poverty. A roughly equal number of households escaped from poverty in the first period (ten to 25...