Over the next 20 years, most low-income countries will, for the first time, become more urban than rural. Understanding demographic trends in the cities of the developing world is critical to those countries - their societies, economies, and environments. The benefits from urbanization cannot be overlooked, but the speed and sheer scale of this transformation presents many challenges.In this uniquely thorough and authoritative volume, 16 of the world's leading scholars on urban pop...

Understanding poverty and what to do about it, is perhaps the central concern of all of economics. Yet the lay public almost never gets to hear what leading professional economists have to say about it. This volume brings together twenty-eight essays by some of the world leaders in the field, who were invited to tell the lay reader about the most important things they have learnt from their research that relate to poverty. The essays cover a wide array of topics: the first essay is about h...

Welfare state reform occurs in all advanced capitalist democracies, but it does not occur in identical ways, to the same degree or with similar consequences. In Comparative Welfare State Politics, Kees van Kersbergen and Barbara Vis explain the political opportunities and constraints of welfare state reform by asking 'big' questions. Why did we need a welfare state in the first place? How did we get it? Why did we get different worlds of welfare and do we still have them? What does the wel...

Is democratic governance good for economic prosperity? Does it accelerate progress towards social welfare and human development? Does it generate a peace-dividend and reduce conflict at home? Within the international community, democracy and governance are widely advocated as intrinsically desirable goals. Nevertheless, alternative schools of thought dispute their consequences and the most effective strategy for achieving critical developmental objectives. This book argues that both libera...

Upon signing the Millennium Declaration in 2000, the international community committed itself to eight development goals with timebound targets and measurable indicators. The third of these eight goals was to "promote gender equality and empower women". The third Millennium Development Goal (MDG3) in the Millennium Declaration has spurred national and international efforts to improve women's situation around the globe. Equality for Women: Where Do We Stand on Millennium Goal 3? tracks co...

The heterogeneity of social structures and cultural identities in many developing countries, together with traditional hierarchies, rivalries, and deep-seated biases, has perpetuated inequities. Inclusive States: Social Policy and Structural Inequalities examines the role of the state and society in addressing structural inequalities and identifies a set of policy recommendations to redress them. This book defines structural inequality as a condition arising from unequal status attributed to ...

Most examinations of non-citizens in Canada focus on immigrants, people who are citizens-in-waiting, or specific categories of temporary, vulnerable workers. In contrast, Producing and Negotiating Non-Citizenship considers a range of people whose pathway to citizenship is uncertain or non-existent. This includes migrant workers, students, refugee claimants, and people with expired permits, all of whom have limited formal rights to employment, housing, education, and health service...

Perceptions of Africa have changed dramatically. Viewed as a continent of wars, famines and entrenched poverty in the late 1990s, there is now a focus on “Africa rising†? and an “African 21st century.†? Two decades of unprecedented economic growth in Africa should have brought substantial improvements in well-being. Whether or not they did, remains unclear given the poor quality of the data, the nature of the growth process (especially the role of natural resources), conflicts that affect par...

As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) pass their 2015 deadline and the international community begins to discuss the future of UN development policy, Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals brings together leading economists from both the global North and South to provide a much needed critique of the prevailing development agenda. By examining current development efforts, goals and policies, it exposes the structurally flawed and misleading measurements of poverty and h...

The WDR 2012: Gender Equality and Development will focus on the evolution of gender equality across the world in the context of the development process. The report will consider gender equality as a core development goal in itself, and will argue that gender equality matters for the pace of development. Improvements in gender equality can generate gains in economic efficiency and improvements in other development outcomes. And gender equality has consequences for the quality and representativ...

This book is a compilation of a series of "state of the art" papers on topics related to equity and growth. As inputs to its final report (The Growth Report), the Commission on Growth and Development took stock of the current state of knowledge and understanding of various sectors/issues that have an impact on economic growth, including equity, education, health, leadership and others. The following questions are discussed in the book: - What has been the evolution of poverty and equity durin...

Child poverty is a central and present part of global life, with hundreds of millions of children around the world enduring tremendous suffering and deprivation of their most basic needs. Despite its long history, research on poverty and development has only relatively recently examined the issue of child poverty as a distinct topic of concern. This book brings together theoretical, methodological and policy-relevant contributions by leading researchers on international child poverty....