Attacking poverty

The international development debate has undergone significant changes during the last decade. Although many developing economies in fact did quite well in terms of macroeconomic stabilization, progress on poverty reduction was judged to be disappointing. In response to the experience of the 1990s, the international community has adopted a set of international development goals for reductions in income poverty and improvements in human development indicators. These goals were reaffirmed and expanded in the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations. It seems that sustainable poverty reduction without economic growth is not feasible; a large and still growing number of empirical studies supports this hypothesis. However, similar growth rates in different countries have reduced poverty to differing degrees, i. e. the poverty reduction elasticity of per capita growth is far from uniform. This book explores the possibilities of making growth more pro-poor, thus achieving a faster process of poverty reduction than observed in the past. The authors are experts from International Financial Institutions and the international research community. Michael Krakowski is Senior Economist at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA). His current research interests include economic regulation and governance issues in developing countries and the organization of development aid. He had worked several years as government advisor in Latin America.