How did we come to think that eliminating poverty is a legitimate goal for public policy? What policies emerged in the … hope of attaining that goal? The last 200 years have witnessed a dramatic change in thinking about poverty. Mainstream … economic thinking in the eighteenth century held that poverty was necessary and even desirable for a country's economic success …

At the outset of China's reform period, the country had a far higher poverty rate than for Africa as a whole. Within … five years that was no longer true. This paper tries to explain how China escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty … persisted due to failed and unpopular policies. While acknowledging that Africa faces constraints that China did not, and that …

At the outset of China's reform period, the country had a far higher poverty rate than for Africa as a whole. Within … five years that was no longer true. This paper tries to explain how China escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty … persisted due to failed and unpopular policies. While acknowledging that Africa faces constraints that China did not, and that …