Poverty in emerging Asia : progress, setbacks, and log-jams

The financial crisis of 1997-98 in East and Southeast Asia has raised questions about sustainability of some hitherto admired modes of poverty reduction. But this paper argues that there remain important lessons to learn from Asia's great ascent out of poverty since the Second World War. It remains important that well before the setback struck, much of this area had eliminated food poverty. The focus of this paper is the growing concentration of poverty on the "hard-core poor" especially among the uneducated in backward regions, and the declining elasticities of poverty to economic growth. (DSE/DÜI)