Author: Shahidur R. Khandker
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464808953
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
The recent past has witnessed phenomenal growth in MFIs around the world. Today as many as 200 million people are beneficiaries of microfinance. Given its worldwide attention, microfinance has received serious criticism, including the argument that it is a fad with less-than-expected benefits for the poor. Surely, microfinance is not without any pitfalls. Yet the premise of improving access to financial services for consumption smoothing by the poor has never been a subject of controversy. What has been controversial is whether microfinance can alleviate poverty. That the poor lack an effective and affordable alternative financing mechanism to support income generation does not necessarily mean microfinance is a panacea since it involves entrepreneurial skills, which many poor lack. It is little wonder that studies evaluating the benefits of microfinance have produced conflicting results. Of course, study findings are contextual: They are positive in conducive environments and less so in unfavorable ones. Microfinance must be distinguished from anti-poverty schemes (e.g., conditional cash transfers) because benefits from microfinance-supported activities, which involve participants’ entrepreneurial skills and ability, take time to realize. This book using household long panel survey of 1991/92-2010/11 from Bangladesh addresses some of criticisms—including whether pushing microfinance has made it redundant as a tool for poverty reduction—while investigating whether it still matters for the poor after two decades of extensive growth. The book’s findings confirm the positive effects of continued borrowing from a microfinance program. Despite a manifold increase in microfinance borrowing, loan recovery has not declined and long-term borrowers are not trapped in poverty or debt. Interest rates charged by MFIs are not too high for realizing returns on investment, although the MFIs have scope for lowering them. The book is expected to contribute to the ongoing debate on the cost-effectiveness of microfinance as a tool for inclusive growth and development. It is expected to fill knowledge gaps in understanding the various virtues of microfinance against its portrayal as having drifted from its original poverty-reduction mission.
Author: Laura Smith
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807771813
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Laura Smith argues that if there is any segment of society that should be concerned with the impact of classism and poverty, it is those within the “helping professions”—people who have built their careers around understanding and facilitating human emotional well-being. In this groundbreaking book, Smith charts the ebbs and flows of psychology’s consideration of poor clients, and then points to promising new approaches to serving poor communities that go beyond remediation, sympathy, and charity. Including the author’s own experiences as a psychologist in a poor community, this inspiring book: Shows practitioners and educators how to implement considerations of social class and poverty within mental health theory and practice.Addresses poverty from a true social class perspective, beginning with questions of power and oppression in health settings.Presents a view of poverty that emerges from the words of the poor through their participation in interviews and qualitative research.Offers a message of hope that poor clients and psychologists can reinvent their relationship through working together in ways that are liberating for all parties. Laura Smith is an assistant professor in the department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. “Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, [this]is an impassioned charge to mental health professionals to advocate in truly helpful ways for America’s poor and working-class citizens . . . beautifully written and structured in a way that provides solid information with digestible doses of in-your-face depictions of poverty . . . Smith’s appeal to the healing profession is a gift. She envisions a class-inclusive society that shares common resources, opportunities, institutions, and hope. Smith’s book is a beautiful, chilling treatise calling for social change, mapping the road that will ultimately lead to that change. . . . This inspired book . . . is not meant to be purchased, perused, and placed on a shelf. It is meant to be lived. Are you in?” —PsycCRITIQUES magazine “Smith does not invite you to examine the life of the poor; she forces you to do it. And after you do it, you cannot help but question your practice. Whether you are a psychologist, a social worker, a counselor, a nurse, a psychiatrist, a teacher, or a community organizer, you will gain insights about the lives of the people you work with.” —From the Foreword by Isaac Prilleltensky, Dean, School of Education, University of Miami, Florida “This groundbreaking book challenges practitioners and educators to rethink dominant understandings of social class and poverty, and it offers concrete strategies for addressing class-based inequities. Psychology, Poverty, and the End of Social Exclusion should be required reading for anyone interested in economic and social justice.” —Heather Bullock, University of California, Santa Cruz
Author: Dean Jolliffe
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464803617
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
"This Policy Research Report was prepared by the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank by a team led by Dean Jolliffe and Peter Lanjouw"--Page xiii.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789287042323
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty looks at the complex relationships between economic growth, poverty reduction and trade, and examines the challenges that poor people face in benefiting from trade opportunities. Written jointly by the World Bank Group and the WTO, the publication examines how trade could make a greater contribution to ending poverty by increasing efforts to lower trade costs, improve the enabling environment, implement trade policy in conjunction with other areas of policy, better manage risks faced by the poor, and improve data used for policy-making.
Author: Jeffrey D. Sachs
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143036580
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 465
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Book Description
"Book and man are brilliant, passionate, optimistic and impatient . . . Outstanding." —The Economist The landmark exploration of economic prosperity and how the world can escape from extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens, from one of the world's most renowned economists Hailed by Time as one of the world's hundred most influential people, Jeffrey D. Sachs is renowned for his work around the globe advising economies in crisis. Now a classic of its genre, The End of Poverty distills more than thirty years of experience to offer a uniquely informed vision of the steps that can transform impoverished countries into prosperous ones. Marrying vivid storytelling with rigorous analysis, Sachs lays out a clear conceptual map of the world economy. Explaining his own work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, he offers an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the world's poorest countries. Ten years after its initial publication, The End of Poverty remains an indispensible and influential work. In this 10th anniversary edition, Sachs presents an extensive new foreword assessing the progress of the past decade, the work that remains to be done, and how each of us can help. He also looks ahead across the next fifteen years to 2030, the United Nations' target date for ending extreme poverty, offering new insights and recommendations.
Author: Stephane Hallegatte
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464806748
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.
Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812981561
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
Argues that for the first time in history we're in a position to end extreme poverty throughout the world, both because of our unprecedented wealth and advances in technology, therefore we can no longer consider ourselves good people unless we give more to the poor. Reprint.
Author: Constantine Michalopoulos
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192590499
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Ending poverty continues to be a major challenge for the global community. It is even more urgent and relevant today when the world is facing the covid-19 pandemic as it was two decades ago, when four women rose to prominent positions as ministers in charge of international development in their governments.Ending Global Poverty: Four Women's Noble Conspiracytells the story of Eveline Herfkens from the Netherlands, Hilde F. Johnson from Norway, Clare Short from the United Kingdom, and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul from Germany who joined forces to challenge the establishment policies of international institutions. Named for the Norwegian Abbey where the formalized their collaboration in 1999, the so-called Utstein Four embarked on a 'conspiracy of implementation', using foreign aid as a tool to end global poverty, rather than pursue narrow political or commercial interests. They helped achieve primary education for women, used developing countries' debt relief to lift individuals out of poverty, and put development partners in charge of setting priorities and implementing programs of assistance. Their story of female empowerment and the importance of working together is a crucial lesson, andEnding Global Povertyfocuses on the implications of this for today's development challenges, including the struggle to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals which is becoming more difficult every day. The Utstein Four's collaboration lasted for only about half a dozen years but their influence continues to be felt. Much has been achieved but some lessons have been forgotten and large new challenges remain.Ending Global Poverty: Four Women'sNobel Conspiracyconsiders the lasting legacy of the Utstein group and the lessons that their experience of commitment, collaboration and leadership offers to a new generation of leaders as they work to eradicate global poverty and achieve sustainable development.
Author: World Bank;International Monetary Fund
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9781464803369
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015: Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity was written jointly by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund, with substantive inputs from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This year's report details, for the first time, progress toward the WBG's twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity and assesses the state of policies and institutions that are important for achieving them. The report continues to monitor progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Also for the first time, the report includes information about high-income countries. It finds that while gaps in living standards have been closing in many countries, the well-being of households in the bottom 40 percent, as measured by the non-income MDGs such as access to education and health services, remains below that of households in the top 60 percent. The focus of this year's report is on three elements needed to make growth more inclusive and sustainable: investment in human capital that favors the poor, the best use of safety nets, and steps to ensure the environmental sustainability of economic growth. These three elements are imperative to all countries' development strategies, and are also fundamental to global efforts to achieve the twin goals, the MDGs, and the Sustainable Development Goals that will succeed the MDGs. Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015 was prepared in collaboration with regional development banks and other multilateral partners.
Author: B. Goudzwaard
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802076373
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
Beyond Poverty and Affluence argues that, like a virus which has developed an immunity to the cure, the problems of poverty, environmental degeneration, and unemployment today successfully resist the remedy of growth in industrial production. Bob Goudzwaard and Harry de Lange demonstrate that over the last several decades the solutions used by industrialized nations either have not helped or have dramatically exacerbated these problems. Instead, these predicaments have become structural features of today's economic practice. The authors formulate an alternative, which they call the economics of care, and propose a twelve-step program for economic recovery in Canada. Goudzwaard and de Lange contend that poverty, environmental damage, and unemployment have a common origin: they emerge from structural flaws in classical and contemporary neoclassical economic thought, including that of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Drawing on thinkers as diverse as RenT Girard and Hannah Arendt, on numerous Canadian sources, and on their own Christian tradition, the authors propose a `pre-care' economy, which places care needs first on its list of priorities and only then addresses the scope of production, rather than a 'post-care' economy, which pursues maximum consumption and production above all else. They also describe in detail structural changes the Canadian economy will need to undergo to become an economy of pre-care. Included in their discussion is an assessment of the progress of `sustainable development' in Canada, including the work of the federal and provincial roundtables on environment and economy, and a proposed framework for setting Canadian government finances on a durable foundation. The twelve economic proposals the authors put forward deal with such issues as international currency creation, the environment, the foundation of labour/management relations, the funding of social programs, wage and salary development, the scope of production and technological development, the structure of economic decision-making, the direction of government funding, and the dropping of trade barriers in North America and Europe.
