Laos and Cambodia have been transitioning to a market-oriented policy regime. Both are agrarian economies with agriculture contributing about one-third of the GDP. We assess prospects of achieving MDG1 and centrality of agricultural growth in achieving this goal. As these are macro...

The objective of this paper is to examine how agricultural and nonagricultural labor productivities have grown over time and whether the growth pattern affected poverty in low- and middle-income economies in Asia. We first examine whether labor productivities in the agricultural and...

Chinese households have experienced significant income growth, while their nutrition intake has not increased pari passu. This paper uses household data in both rural and urban China over the period 1989-2009 to explain the paradox of higher income but lower nutrition. In addition to traditional...

This paper analyses the effects of access to Rural Public Works (RPW) and the Public Distribution System (PDS), a public food subsidy programme, on consumption poverty, vulnerability and undernutrition in India drawing, on the large household datasets constructed with National Sample Survey...

Based on cross-country datasets, we find that (i) development of the rural agricultural sector is the most poverty reducing; (ii) rural non-agricultural sector also is poverty reducing in some cases, but its magnitude is much smaller than that associated with the rural agricultural sector; and...

Drawing upon a cross-country panel data for developing countries, the present study sheds new empirical light on dynamic and long-term linkages among growth, inequality and poverty. First, agricultural sector growth is found to be consistently the most important factor in reducing inequality and...

Based on cross-country panel datasets, we find that (i) an increase in population share in agriculture is associated with poverty reduction once the longer-term poverty change or the dynamic is taken into account; (ii) rural non-agricultural sector also is poverty reducing in some cases; and...

Based on cross-country panel datasets, we find that (i) an increase in population share in agriculture is associated with poverty reduction once the longer-term poverty change or dynamic is taken into account; (ii) the rural non-agricultural sector also is poverty-reducing in some cases; and...