Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

This book takes a unique approach to the topic of poverty reduction, primarily employing an international business framework as opposed to the usual economic or political lens. Some of the key ideas explored in the book include: poverty is primarily the lack of choices, not the lack of material possessions; attacking inequality of opportunity might be a more effective means to reduce poverty than attaching inequality of wealth; political systems matter, but individuals and for-profit firms also have a vital and indispensable role in helping to create the wealth needed to reduce poverty; and an effective corporate social responsibility strategy to help reduce poverty may include finding innovative and creative ways to operate profitably in areas of the world where poverty is currently robbing too many people of the opportunity to live their version of the good life. Building on such ideas, the book advocates for private companies to expand operations into the least developed regions of the world as part of their corporate social responsibility programs and to reframe the debates away from ones focused on exploitation and economic nationalism to one of creating opportunities across political borders.

This book investigates the role of wealth in achieving sustainable rural economic development. The authors define wealth as all assets net of liabilities that can contribute to well-being, and they provide examples of many forms of capital – physical, financial, human, natural, social, and others. They propose a conceptual framework for rural wealth creation that considers how multiple forms of wealth provide opportunities for rural development, and how development strategies affect the dynamics of wealth. They also provide a new accounting framework for measuring wealth stocks and flows. These conceptual frameworks are employed in case study chapters on measuring rural wealth and on rural wealth creation strategies. Rural Wealth Creation makes numerous contributions to research on sustainable rural development. Important distinctions are drawn to help guide wealth measurement, such as the difference between the wealth located within a region and the wealth owned by residents of a region, and privately owned versus publicly owned wealth. Case study chapters illustrate these distinctions and demonstrate how different forms of wealth can be measured. Several key hypotheses are proposed about the process of rural wealth creation, and these are investigated by case study chapters assessing common rural development strategies, such as promoting rural energy industries and amenity-based development. Based on these case studies, a typology of rural wealth creation strategies is proposed and an approach to mapping the potential of such strategies in different contexts is demonstrated. This book will be relevant to students, researchers, and policy makers looking at rural community development, sustainable economic development, and wealth measurement.

A daunting challenge to the international community is how to go about lifting the world's huge poor population out of poverty. "Asset-based" approaches to development are aimed specifically at designing and implementing public policies that will increase the capital assets of the poor—i.e., the physical, financial, human, social, and natural resources that can be acquired, developed, improved, and transferred across generations. In this pathbreaking book, Caroline Moser and a group of experts with on-the-ground experience provide a set of case studies of asset-building projects around the globe. The authors use a cutting-edge research framework that moves beyond quick snapshot solutions to the problem of poverty. They highlight the ways in which poor households and communities can move out of poverty through longer-term accumulation of capital assets. Contributors include Michael Carter (University of Wisconsin), Monique Cohen (Microfinance Opportunities), Sarah Cook (Institute of Development Studies, Sussex), Hector Cordero-Guzman (Baruch College, CUNY), Lilianne Fan (Oxfam, UK), Pablo Farias (Ford Foundation, New York), Clare Ferguson (formerly DFID), Andy Felton (FDIC), Sarah Gammage (Rutgers University), Anirudh Krishna (Duke University), Amy Liu (Brookings Institution), Vijay Mahajan (BASIX, India), Paula Nimpuno-Parente (Ford Foundation, South Africa), Manuel Orozco (Inter-American Dialogue),Victoria Quiroz-Becerra (Baruch College, CUNY), Dennis Rodgers (London School of Economics), and Andres Solimano (CEPAL, Santiago, Chile).

"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.

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.