Publication: African Poverty at the Millennium : Causes, Complexities, and Challenges
Loading...
Published
2001-03
ISSN
Date
2013-06-12
Editor(s)
Abstract
The multifaceted nature of the poverty problem, and the widening gap between the levels of human well-being in Africa, compared with the other developing regions, are the central themes of this report. The key elements of poverty reduction strategies in the region are reviewed, pointing at the need for accelerated economic growth, if living standards are to improve in Africa. To this end, the report outlines the growth of African poverty, amid the variations between countries, which reflect regional differences, such as higher levels of infant/child mortality in West Africa, though this gap is narrowing, partly because of the higher HIV/AIDS prevalence in eastern, and southern Africa. It analyzes the causes of poverty, through the interaction of cause and effect, neglect, and policy implications, and examines economic stagnation as the cause of much poverty, through an overview of growth vs. distribution, the slow pace of growth in Africa, and the impact of growth as it affects poverty groups differently. However, it also points at the failure of both governments, and markets in reducing poverty, stating political systems do contribute to economic stagnation, whereas sustainable social indicators require not only growing incomes, but improved state service provision. The need for the donor community to redefine poverty reduction is imminent, and the report suggests more selective aid allocation, including debt relief, in accordance with government commitments to reducing poverty.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“White, Howard; Killick, Tony; Kayizzi-Mugerwa, Steve; Savane, Marie-Angelique. 2001. African Poverty at the Millennium : Causes, Complexities, and Challenges. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13866 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Dominican Republic - Poverty Assessment : Poverty in a High-Growth Economy, 1986-2000, Volume 1. Main Report(Washington, DC, 2001-12-17)Since its recovery of macroeconomic stability in 1991, the Dominican Republic has experienced a period of notable economic growth. Poverty has declined in the 1990s. Nevertheless, a segment of the population-mainly in rural areas-does not seem to have benefited from this growth. Poverty in this country in 1998 is less than that of other countries if one adjusts for the level of economic development. The principal poverty characteristics are the following: Disparity in poverty levels in rural areas relative to the rest of the country. Destitution in the "bateyes," the communities arising near the sugar cane plantations, that are mainly composed of women, children, and the aged. Urban vulnerability to environmental problems while access to basic services is restricted. Vulnerability to natural disasters that destroy the means of production. Poverty is high among children--especially those who have abandoned formal education-female-headed households, and the aged-the latter due to lack of social safety nets and the absence of pension systems. There is a strong correlation between poverty and health indicators like the presence of malnutrition, and poverty and education, and poverty and the absence of basic services. Government transfers and foreign remittances play an important role in reducing poverty.Publication Swaziland : Reducing Poverty Through Shared Growth(Washington, DC, 2000-01-12)The people of Swaziland are its greatest resource. Yet, social and economic indicators of household welfare converge to confirm fundamental inequalities in access to incomes and assets, and the existence of significant poverty and deprivation. Furthermore, as the regional economic and social climate is transformed, the fragile gains of the past are being fast eroded. At this historic juncture, the Swazi poor need to come to the fore of the public policy framework. There is an urgent need to catalyze a new pattern of pro-poor development in Swaziland where the poor participate and share fully in growth, human development, and social protection. The report calls for prioritizing the following actions: 1) enabling the growth of smallholder agriculture, 2) ensuring effective human development investments, 3) insuring the poor against major risks, and 4) strengthening institutions to increase the poverty impact of policies. The achievement of all these will require fundamental change across sectors and leadership to carry forward the change.Publication FYR of Macedonia : Poverty Assessment for 2002-2003(Washington, DC, 2005-11)This report provides a broad assessment of the status of living standards in FYR Macedonia during the period 2002 - 2003. This work complements the body of analysis undertaken by the Government, independent researchers, and donors on economic developments in FYR Macedonia. Instead of analyzing the successes or failures of policies in engendering growth, the report focuses its attention on examining living conditions as they stand today. Since economic growth is not an end in itself but rather a means to achieving sustained improvements in living conditions of all citizens, how good or bad outcomes are ultimately reflect the success or failure of government policies. In order to reach its ultimate objective, the report specifically sets out to do the following: (i) provide a broad perspective on how living conditions in FYR Macedonia compares to other countries in the region; (ii) determine the extent of poverty among FYR Macedonia's population and outline the profile of the poor; and (iii) analyze the linkage between growth and changes in poverty overtime.Publication Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009)Over the past decade, faster growth and smarter social policy have reversed the trend in Latin America's poverty. Too slowly and insufficiently, but undeniably, the percentage of Latinos who are poor has at long last begun to fall. This has shifted the political and policy debates from poverty toward inequality, something to be expected in a region that exhibits the world's most regressive distribution of development outcomes such as income, land ownership, and educational achievement. This book is a breakthrough in the measurement of human opportunity. It builds sophisticated formulas to answer a rather simple question: how much influence do personal circumstances have on the access that children get to the basic services that are necessary for a productive life? Needless to say, producing a methodology to measure human opportunity, and applying it across countries in one region, is just a first step. On the one hand, technical discussions and scientific vetting will continue, and refinements will surely follow. On the other, applying the new tool to a single country will allow for adjustments that make the findings much more useful to its policy realities. And fascinating comparative lessons could be learned by measuring human opportunity in developed countries across, say, the states of the United States or the nations of Europe. But the main message this book delivers remains a powerful one: it is possible to make equity a central purpose, if not the very definition, of development. That is, perhaps, it's most important contribution.Publication Madagascar : Three Years into the Crisis(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-05)Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world and a very high proportion of the population experiences frequent shocks, whether from natural disasters, economic shocks or internal crises of governance. As a consequence, about half the country s population is undernourished. Children between the ages of 6 and 14 face the risks of low human capital development, child labor and marginalization. On the other hand, the Government of Madagascar s commitment to social protection as a national policy was never fully effective. Interventions in social protection have been developed on an ad-hoc basis, often on the initiative of donors. In order to inform the government s policy development, the report proposes a social protection strategy that increases the protection of the population while decreasing its vulnerability, taking into account the existing programs and the differences in exposure to risks between population groups recommendations that emerge from the research.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Moving Out of Poverty : Volume 1. Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Mobility(Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)This volume brings together multidisciplinary perspectives on poor people's mobility, a dynamic approach that hopefully will add to the reader's understanding of how and why people move into and out of poverty. The chapters draw on the latest longitudinal micro data to present a moving picture of poverty that is rather different from what one can see in single snapshots, the staple of traditional poverty analysis. The book is also important because the contributors' distinct disciplinary perspectives demonstrate clearly why it is critical to draw on diverse information to improve the reader's understanding about how to reduce poverty. The economic findings reinforce what has been known for some time: fast economic growth underpins poverty reduction, but the speed of declines in poverty is greatly affected by social and political factors. The economic panels also show that the people mired in chronic poverty around the world are actually fewer in number than the people moving in and out of poverty. Static studies do not capture this dynamic quality of poverty and vulnerability. Of particular interest are the chapters clarifying interactions between the local social, political, and economic factors that underlie persistent poverty, vulnerability, and inequality. They point to the need to draw from different disciplines as we turn to the task of reaching the bottom poor trapped in poverty and those churning in and out of poverty.Publication Digital Progress and Trends Report 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-05)Digitalization is the transformational opportunity of our time. The digital sector has become a powerhouse of innovation, economic growth, and job creation. Value added in the IT services sector grew at 8 percent annually during 2000–22, nearly twice as fast as the global economy. Employment growth in IT services reached 7 percent annually, six times higher than total employment growth. The diffusion and adoption of digital technologies are just as critical as their invention. Digital uptake has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1.5 billion new internet users added from 2018 to 2022. The share of firms investing in digital solutions around the world has more than doubled from 2020 to 2022. Low-income countries, vulnerable populations, and small firms, however, have been falling behind, while transformative digital innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) have been accelerating in higher-income countries. Although more than 90 percent of the population in high-income countries was online in 2022, only one in four people in low-income countries used the internet, and the speed of their connection was typically only a small fraction of that in wealthier countries. As businesses in technologically advanced countries integrate generative AI into their products and services, less than half of the businesses in many low- and middle-income countries have an internet connection. The growing digital divide is exacerbating the poverty and productivity gaps between richer and poorer economies. The Digital Progress and Trends Report series will track global digitalization progress and highlight policy trends, debates, and implications for low- and middle-income countries. The series adds to the global efforts to study the progress and trends of digitalization in two main ways: · By compiling, curating, and analyzing data from diverse sources to present a comprehensive picture of digitalization in low- and middle-income countries, including in-depth analyses on understudied topics. · By developing insights on policy opportunities, challenges, and debates and reflecting the perspectives of various stakeholders and the World Bank’s operational experiences. This report, the first in the series, aims to inform evidence-based policy making and motivate action among internal and external audiences and stakeholders. The report will bring global attention to high-performing countries that have valuable experience to share as well as to areas where efforts will need to be redoubled.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication The Other Half of Gender : Men's Issues in Development(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)This book is an attempt to bring the gender and development debate full circle-from a much-needed focus on empowering women to a more comprehensive gender framework that considers gender as a system that affects both women and men. The chapters in this book explore definitions of masculinity and male identities in a variety of social contexts, drawing from experiences in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. It draws on a slowly emerging realization that attaining the vision of gender equality will be difficult, if not impossible, without changing the ways in which masculinities are defined and acted upon. Although changing male gender norms will be a difficult and slow process, we must begin by understanding how versions of masculinities are defined and acted upon.Publication Empowerment in Practice : From Analysis to Implementation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)This book represents an effort to present an easily accessible framework to readers, especially those for whom empowerment remains a puzzling development concern, conceptually and in application. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 explains how the empowerment framework can be used for understanding, measuring, monitoring, and operationalizing empowerment policy and practice. Part 2 presents summaries of each of the five country studies, using them to discuss how the empowerment framework can be applied in very different country and sector contexts and what lessons can be learned from these test cases. While this book can offer only a limited empirical basis for the positive association between empowerment and development outcomes, it does add to the body of work supporting the existence of such a relationship. Perhaps more importantly, it also provides a framework for future research to test the association and to prioritize practical interventions seeking to empower individuals and groups.