Poverty reduction is now, and quite properly should remain, the primary objective of the World Bank. But, when the World Bank dreams of a world free of poverty-what should it be dreaming? I argue in this essay that the dream should be a bold one, that treats citizens of all nations equally in...

When the World Bank dreams of quot;a world free of poverty,quot; what should it be dreaming? In measuring global income or consumption expenditure poverty, the World Bank has widely adopted the $1 a day standard as a lower bound. Because this standard is based on poverty lines in the poorest...

Typically only a small proportion of the population is chronically poor; many more are not always poor but are vulnerable to episodes or seasons of poverty and would be interested in programs that reduce the risks they face.Vulnerability is an important aspect of households' experience of...

The relative price of food increased considerably during Indonesia's recent economic crisis, so the explicit (or implicit) choice of the weight given to the inflation rate for food prices dramatically affects calculations of the poverty rate.Poverty is intrinsically a complex social construct,...

While household wealth is strongly related to educational attainment of children nearly everywhere, the magnitude and pattern of the effect of wealth differs widely. The gap in attainment of children of the poor and rich ranges from only one or two years in some countries to nine or ten years in...

Poverty is intrinsically a complex social construct, and even when it is narrowly defined by a deficit of consumption spending, many thorny issues arise in setting an appropriate "poverty line". The authors limit themselves to examining how poverty - defined on a consistent, welfare-comparable...

Imagine several mountain climbers, scaling a cliff face, who want protection from falling. One way to protect them would be to place a net at the bottom of the cliff to catch any climber just before he hits the ground. Another would be to provide a rope, and a set of movable devices that can be...