This paper reports on proceedings from an international workshop on social funds, held on May 21-24, 1997, in Washington, DC. The objectives of the workshop were to take stock of a decade's implementation experience of social funds with a view to assessing their impact on poverty reduction; establish a broad consensus on their main achievements, weaknesses, and risks; generate a set of recommendations for improving existing operations as well as for the design of future social funds; and facilitate the integration of international and regional networks of social funds.
Annotation World Bank Discussion Paper No. 375.Social funds have proved to be important instruments for reaching the poor using community-based strategies. Yet, while there have been innovations in the design of these funds, the projects are much less participatory and demand-oriented than is commonly believed. This paper examines the extent to which social fund subprojects are designed to support community participation, demand orientation, and investment in local organizational capacity to achieve sustainability at the community level.
This book takes a new approach on understanding causes of extreme poverty and promising actions to address it. Its focus is on marginality being a root cause of poverty and deprivation. “Marginality” is the position of people on the edge, preventing their access to resources, freedom of choices, and the development of capabilities. The book is research based with original empirical analyses at local, national, and local scales; book contributors are leaders in their fields and have backgrounds in different disciplines. An important message of the book is that economic and ecological approaches and institutional innovations need to be integrated to overcome marginality. The book will be a valuable source for development scholars and students, actors that design public policies, and for social innovators in the private sector and non-governmental organizations.
Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.
Despite the billions of dollars spent on development assistance each year, there is still very little known about the actual impact of projects on the poor. There is broad evidence on the benefits of economic growth, investments in human capital, and the provision of safety nets for the poor. But for a specific program or project in a given country, is the intervention producing the intended benefits and what was the overall impact on the population? Could the program or project be better designed to achieve the intended outcomes? Are resources being spent efficiently? These are the types of questions that can only be answered through an impact evaluation, an approach which measures the outcomes of a program intervention in isolation of other possible factors. This handbook seeks to provide project managers and policy analysts with the tools needed for evaluating project impact. It is aimed at readers with a general knowledge of statistics. For some of the more in-depth statistical methods discussed, the reader is referred to the technical literature on the topic. Chapter 1 presents an overview of concepts and methods. Chapter 2 discusses key steps and related issues to consider in implementation. Chapter 3 illustrates various analytical techniques through a case study. Chapter 4 includes a discussion of lessons learned from a rich set of "good practice" evaluations of poverty projects which have been reviewed for this handbook.
This book is a must read for researchers and students interested in poverty, poverty reduction, social welfare and development. It provides systematic and comparative studies on the design features, achievements and problems of targeting, set against specific national contexts. The economic focus of the analysis is balanced with sections on the political economy of targeting and management aspects (administrative systems and incentives). While the considerable variations between targeting mechanisms, schemes and contexts demonstrate the difficulties of blanket policy prescriptions, the book presents a fascinating conclusion. Rather than continuing the debate about universal versus targeted approaches, it proposes that a mixed approach might be best: the broad targeting of basic services such as primary education and health care combined with the narrow targeting of social protection schemes for the very poor. David Hulme, University of Manchester, UK Most governments attempt to target resources directly at the poor through a variety of measures including food and credit subsidies, job creation schemes and basic health and education projects. These measures are usually classified as being either promotional (to help raise welfare in the long term), or protectional (to support the poor in times of adverse shocks). However, for many Asian countries the reality of these poverty targeting measures has proved disappointing. Following a comprehensive overview by the editor, this book offers a detailed assessment of the results of directly channelling resources to the poor and extensively discusses the experience of five Asian countries India, Indonesia, the People s Republic of China, the Philippines and Thailand. The authors demonstrate how in many cases these targeting measures have failed due to their high cost and errors of both undercoverage (where many of the poor are excluded) and leakage (when many of the better-off also benefit from these schemes). The authors conclude that whilst poverty targeting remains a critically important objective, past targeting errors must not be forgotten and improved methods of both identifying and reaching the poor must be implemented. Written by leading experts in the field and including analysis of original country surveys, this seminal text documents clearly the operation and success of aid schemes in Asia. This book will make a worthy addition to the literature on development, poverty reduction, social welfare and Asian studies. It will also be an important source of reference for academics and students of economic development, aid practitioners, government officials and development NGOs.
The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.
* Argues strongly for overlooked approach to development by showing how the poor use money in ways that confound stereotypical notions of aid and handouts * Team authored by foremost scholars in the development field Amid all the complicated economic theories about the causes and solutions to poverty, one idea is so basic it seems radical: just give money to the poor. Despite its skeptics, researchers have found again and again that cash transfers given to significant portions of the population transform the lives of recipients. Countries from Mexico to South Africa to Indonesia are giving money directly to the poor and discovering that they use it wisely “ to send their children to school, to start a business and to feed their families. Directly challenging an aid industry that thrives on complexity and mystification, with highly paid consultants designing ever more complicated projects, Just Give Money to the Pooroffers the elegant southern alternative “ bypass governments and NGOs and let the poor decide how to use their money. Stressing that cash transfers are not charity or a safety net, the authors draw an outline of effective practices that work precisely because they are regular, guaranteed and fair. This book, the first to report on this quiet revolution in an accessible way, is essential reading for policymakers, students of international development and anyone yearning for an alternative to traditional poverty-alleviation methods.
