Main Stacks

Summary
"This ground-breaking study on the measurement of poverty shows how policy in this field has taken a wrong turn with disastrous results. In recent years, poverty has generally been understood in 'relative' terms. That is, people are regarded as poor if they earn less than some benchmark relative to average earnings. One perverse result of such relative poverty measures amongst many is that poverty often declines in a serious recession when the better paid lose their jobs."

Main Stacks

Summary
"The importance of agricultural growth to poverty reduction is well known, but the specific channels through which the poor can take advantage of growth require further research. Beyond Food Production takes on this challenge, investigating four important channels: rural labor markets, farm incomes, food prices, and linkages to other economic sectors. Using six developing country cases, this study elucidates the mechanisms linking agriculture growth to economic development and the wellbeing of the poor."

UIUC Online Collection

Summary
"This groundbreaking volume researches the lives of gecekondu settlers in the capital city of Turkey in order to understand how households cope with poverty and why some households are more successful than others in reducing their deprivation."

Education Reference [non-circulating]
UIUC Online Collection

Main Stacks

Summary
"Why is food security and nutrition (FSN) seldom a priority in national development planning? One reason is that strategies to reduce food insecurity and malnutrition are principally seen as a concern of the agricultural sector. Specific food insecurity reduction goals and targets are usually absent from most poverty reduction planning instruments. This book synthesizes lessons learned from five countries - Bhutan, Cambodia, Kenya, Mozambique and United Republic of Tanzania - in providing policy assistance to better integrate FSN concerns in national policies and planning processes"

Education

Summary
"For more than thirty years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet while the "Green Revolution" succeeded in South America and Asia, it never got to Africa. More than 9 million people die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every year--most of them in Africa and most of them children. More die of hunger in Africa than from AIDS and malaria combined. Now, an impending global food crisis threatens to make things worse. In the West we think of famine as a natural disaster, brought about by drought, or as the legacy of brutal dictators. But in this powerful investigative narrative, Thurow & Kilman show exactly how, in the past few decades, American, British, and European policies conspired to keep Africa hungry and unable to feed itself."

Purchase on Request Item

Summary
"In this hard-hitting polemic, Aneel Karnani demonstrates what is wrong with today's approaches to reducing poverty and proposes an eclectic approach to poverty reduction in which business, government, and civil society all have an important role, arguing for a paradigm shift to focus on the poor as producers. The primary emphasis must be on creating employment opportunities for the poor and increasing their productive capacities by ensuring basic public services. The fight against poverty relies on raising income through job creation and providing basic public services for all people of the world."

Main Stacks

Summary
"This book examines the impact of globalization on employment, income distribution and poverty reduction in developing countries using the five country studies of Ghana, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Nepal and Vietnam."

Purchase on Request Item

Summary
"Drawing on field research in Namibia and the Solomon Islands and case studies of international organizations such as USAID and Oxfam, Suzan Ilcan and Anita Lacey argue that aid programs have forged new understandings of poverty that are more about governing the poor through neo-liberal reforms than providing just solutions to poverty. An illuminating work of critiques and solutions for the current global aid regime, Governing the Poor shows the consequences of championing market-based solutions to poverty while neglecting to provide social infrastructure."

Mains Stacks

Summary
"This study examines the impact of policies on growth, employment and poverty reduction in Indonesia, reviewing the periods both before and after the 1997 financial crisis and drawing important implications for today's policy-makers"

Main Stacks

Summary
"In the River They Swim is the antithesis to the search for solutions the next big theory of global poverty. From the perspective of advisors on the frontlines of development to the insight of leaders like President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Pastor Rick Warren, it tells the story of change in the microcosms of emerging businesses, industries, and governments."

Main Stacks

Summary
The contributions in this book are rooted in extensive empirical research at local, regional and/or national level in different African countries (Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa and Uganda), while some take a pan-African view. All, however, offer insight from different analytical perspectives into the heterogeneity of poverty and development processes in Sub-Saharan Africa and confront the ideas, concepts and assumptions that lie behind pro-poor policies. The volume also encourages policy makers to choose realistic policy prescriptions in an attempt to move people out of poverty.

Main Stacks

Summary
"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 Poor offers 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."

Main Stacks

Summary
"The objective of this study is to understand the livelihood situations of the poor in big and small towns, and identify the gaps and linkages between the livelihood requirements of the poor and policies at municipal level. The study was conducted in nine cities and towns of the country, including the capital city."

Main Stacks

Summary
"This book is based on a study of forty-five MFIs carried out by ILO, in partnership with the Universities of Geneva and Cambridge. The application of factor analysis and cluster analysis shows that MFIs form clusters in terms of social and performance. Within each cluster there is one institution that is most efficient on both scores. Public support should ensure that the relative efficiency of MFIs is enhanced, it should not prod MFIs to modify their mission and position between poverty outreach and profitability."

Main Stacks
Residence Halls Illinois Street Circulating Collection

“Poor Economic, is making waves in development circles. Beyond the strong focus on randomised control trials, the book distinguishes itself by wading into issues on which the development community has often ignored or made uninformed guesses. These include the rationale behind the decisions made by the poor, whether they make the "best" decisions available, and how policymakers should respond.” - The Guardian, May 18, 2011

Purchase on Request Item

Summary
"This book takes as starting-point that research on poverty and social exclusion has been undergoing a fundamental shift towards a multidimensional approach; that researchers and policy-makers alike have struggled to develop concepts and indicators that do this approach justice; and that this is highly salient not only within individual countries (including both Britain and the USA) but also for the European Union post-enlargement. The central aim of this book is to contribute to the development of those underpinnings and productive ways of employing non-monetary indicators of deprivation."

Main Stacks

Summary
"This is a book about poverty but it does not study the poor and the powerless; instead it studies those who manage poverty. It sheds light on how powerful institutions control "capital," or circuits of profit and investment, as well as "truth," or authoritative knowledge about poverty. Such dominant practices are challenged by alternative paradigms of development, and the book details these as well. Using the case of microfinance, the book participates in a set of fierce debates about development – from the role of markets to the secrets of successful pro-poor institutions. Based on many years of research in Washington D.C., Bangladesh, and the Middle East, Poverty Capitalalso grows out of the author's undergraduate teaching to thousands of students on the subject of global poverty and inequality."

Main Stacks

Main Stacks

Summary
"This book highlights strategies for poverty reduction in developing countries, with emphasis on the power of the market mechanism and vigor of the private sector, focusing ODA on a few longer term challenges and leveraging advances in technology to the fullest, and underlining the importance of human rights and security."

Main Stacks

Summary
"This interesting work on economic development as a tool for poverty reduction presents a comparative analysis of two Chinese provinces, their implementation of development policies, and the successes and failures of those policies to effect real change in the economic conditions of their residents."

Multiple Locations

Summary
"Global poverty, Paul Collier points out, is actually falling quite rapidly for about eighty percent of the world. The real crisis lies in a group of about 50 failing states, the bottom billion, whose problems defy traditional approaches to alleviating poverty. In The Bottom Billion, Collier contends that these fifty failed states pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century."

Education

Summary
"With a focus on the poor half billion of South Asia, this volume puts into perspective the colossal task ahead to eradicate poverty and enable inclusive growth. Examining the development challenges, successes, and failures of South Asia, it provides fresh perspectives on the links between economic geography, institutions, and globalization. The essays provide answers to why certain regions are lagging through a comparative study of spatial disparities in income, poverty, conflict, human development, and gender divides. Combining quantitative data with analytical rigour, this volume provides innovative short-term and long-term policy solutions to overcome the limits to growth and escape poverty traps."

Main Stacks

Transcript of papers presented in the National Seminar on "Urban Poverty: Challenges for Sustainable Urban Development", organized in February 2006 under the UGC Special Assistance Programme by Department of Sociology, Guru Nanak Dev University.

ACES

Summary
"While some argue that trade liberalization has raised incomes and led to environmental protection in developing countries, others claim that it generates neither poverty reduction nor sustainability. The case studies in this book demonstrate that neither interpretation is universally correct, given how much depends on specific policies and institutions that determine on-the-ground outcomes. Drawing on research from six countries around the developing world, the book also presents the unique perspectives of researchers at both the world's largest development organization and the world's largest conservation organization on the debate over trade liberalization and its effects on poverty and the environment."

ACES

Summary
"This book explores the trade-offs and synergies between development, social concerns and the environment in the Papua, Maluku and East Nusa Tenggara regions of Indonesia. It is written by leading scholars and experts on the region. They investigate the dilemmas of fishing in eastern Indonesia's seas, the strategies and challenges for mining and forestry, and the efforts to tackle biodiversity conservation and climate change."

Education Reference [non-circulating]

Summary
"An Atlas of Poverty in America shows how and where our nation's regional development patterns have become more uneven and graphically illustrates the increasing number of communities falling behind the national economic average. Readers will be able to use this atlas to see how major events and trends have impacted the scope and extent of American poverty in the past half-century-economic globalization, the rise of the sunbelt, decline of the welfare state, and the civil rights movement."

Education

Summary
"This collection of readings provides the voice, the presence, and the perspective of the poor who live on the margins and are generally invisible to the middle and upper classes. "

Communications Reference [non-circulating]

Education

Summary
"A broad overview of poverty in the US, probing the various ways that it has been measured over time and the evolution of social thinking about poverty with updated tables and a new preface."