This collection reviews national policies that critically influence economic performance in developing countries. It describes principles that shape good economic policy and illustrates them with case studies. In an overview that draws together insights from the essays, the volume editor explains why poor countries need sound government policies to offset unfavorable conditions, including scant natural resources, adverse problems that occur with monetary and exchange rate policies and financial sector reform. The basic rules for monetary policy in an open economy are developed along with the different ways in which financial reform and financial repression affect an economy. Practical ways to deal with foreign exchange markets are described. They include such arrangements as multiple exchange rates for commercial transactions and dual rates that separate commercial and financial transactions. Also examined are the ways in which trade liberalization and trade restrictions impede economic development. Advice is given on developing a uniform structure that balances the administration of taxes with the efficiency of a tax structure. The book examines the relationship between budget deficits and money creation and suggests management strategies for developing sound economic policy that include advice on inflation control, international trade, import restrictions, income tax rates, and price and wage controls. Published for the World Bank by Oxford University Press.

Since 1987, when the global community first recognized the high frequency of women in developing countries dying from pregnancy-related causes, little progress has been made to combat this problem. This study follows the global policies that have been implemented in Sololá, Guatemala in order to decrease high rates of maternal mortality among indigenous Mayan women. The author examines the diverse meanings and understandings of motherhood, pregnancy, birth and birth-related death among the biomedical personnel, village women, their families, and midwives. These incongruous perspectives, in conjunction with the implementation of such policies, threaten to disenfranchise clients from their own cultural understandings of self. The author investigates how these policies need to meld with the everyday lives of these women, and how the failure to do so will lead to a failure to decrease maternal deaths globally.

Many of the nearly 600,000 annual maternal deaths can be prevented, and most occur in developing countries where the risk of maternal mortality is 1/1800 versus 1/48 in the developed world. The risk of maternal mortality is highest in Africa, but most maternal deaths occur in Asia. Maternal deaths have direct and indirect causes, and maternal health is influenced by environment. The consequences of maternal death are profound for families, societies, and national economies. Untreated maternal morbidity also has a high cost in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), and women in developing countries lost more DALYs due to maternal causes than to any other cause. Pregnancy and childbirth can be made safer by 1) increasing access to family planning methods, 2) improving the quality of prenatal care, 3) ensuring recognition of complications of pregnancy and delivery, 4) ensuring access to essential obstetric care, 5) providing postabortion care, 6) providing postpartum maternal-child care, and 7) increasing awareness of safe motherhood.

The work-family conflict that mothers experience today is a national crisis. Women struggle to balance breadwinning with the bulk of parenting, and social policies aren't helping. Of all Western industrialized countries, the United States ranks dead last for supportive work-family policies. Can American women look to Europe for solutions? Making Motherhood Work draws on interviews that Caitlyn Collins conducted over five years with 135 middle-class working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States. She explores how women navigate work and family given the different policy supports available in each country. Taking readers into women's homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, Collins shows that mothers' expectations depend on context and that policies alone cannot solve women's struggles. With women held to unrealistic standards, the best solutions demand that we redefine motherhood, work, and family.

The delivery of high quality and equitable care for both mothers and newborns is complex and requires efforts across many sectors. The United States spends more on childbirth than any other country in the world, yet outcomes are worse than other high-resource countries, and even worse for Black and Native American women. There are a variety of factors that influence childbirth, including social determinants such as income, educational levels, access to care, financing, transportation, structural racism and geographic variability in birth settings. It is important to reevaluate the United States' approach to maternal and newborn care through the lens of these factors across multiple disciplines. Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, and Choice reviews and evaluates maternal and newborn care in the United States, the epidemiology of social and clinical risks in pregnancy and childbirth, birth settings research, and access to and choice of birth settings.