At the start of each decade the World Development Report focuses on poverty reduction. The World Development Report, now in its twenty-third edition, proposes an empowerment-security-opportunity framework of action to reduce poverty in the first decades of the twenty-first century. It views poverty as a multidimensional phenonmenon arising out of complex interactions between assets, markets, and institutions. This Report shows how the experience of poverty reduction in the last fifteen years has been remarkably diverse and how this experience has provided useful lessons as well as warnings against simplistic universal policies and interventions. It shows how current global trends present extraordinary opportunities for poverty reduction but also cause extraordinary risks, including growing inequality, marginalization, and social explosions. The World Development Report 2000/2001 explores the challenge of managing these risks in order to make the most of the opportunities for poverty reduction.

For anyone wanting to learn, in practical terms, how to measure, describe, monitor, evaluate, and analyze poverty, this Handbook is the place to start. It is designed to be accessible to people with a university-level background in science or the social sciences. It is an invaluable tool for policy analysts, researchers, college students, and government officials working on policy issues related to poverty and inequality.

A multi-country research initiative to understand poverty from the eyes of the poor, the Voices of the Poor project was undertaken to inform the World Bank's activities and the upcoming World Development Report 2000/01. The research findings are being published in three books: "Can Anyone Hear Us?" gathers the voices of over 40,000 poor women and men in 50 countries from the World Bank's participatory poverty assessments (Deepa Narayan, Raj Patel, Kai Schafft, Anne Rademacher, and Sarah Koch-Schulte, authors). "Crying Out for Change" pulls together new field work conducted in 1999 in 23 countries (Deepa Narayan, Robert Chambers, Meera Shah, and Patti Petesch, authors). "From Many Lands" offers regional patterns and country case-studies (Deepa Narayan and Patti Petesch, editors). Voices of the Poor marks the first time such an exercise has been undertaken in so many developing countries and transition economies around the world. It provides a unique and detailed picture of the life of the poor and explains the constraints poor people face to escape from poverty in a way that more traditional survey techniques do not capture well. Each of the three volumes demonstrates the importance of voice and power in poor people's definition of poverty. Voices of the Poor concludes that we need to expand our conventional views of poverty which focus on income expenditure, education, and health to include measures of voice and empowerment.

In spite of an unprecedented period of growth and prosperity, the poverty rate in the United States remains high relative to the levels of the early 1970s and relative to those in many industrialized countries today. Understanding Poverty brings the problem of poverty in America to the fore, focusing on its nature and extent at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

World Bank Technical Paper No. 394. Joint Forest Management (JFM) has emerged as an important intervention in the management of Indias forest resources. This report sets out an analytical method for examining the costs and benefits of JFM arrangements. Two pilot case studies in which the method was used demonstrate interesting outcomes regarding incentives for various groups to participate. The main objective of this study is to develop a better understanding of the incentives for communities to participate in JFM.

Against the backdrop of the global financial crisis and rising food, fuel, and commodity prices, addressing poverty and inequality in the Philippines remains a challenge. The proportion of households living below the official poverty line has declined slowly and unevenly in the past four decades, and poverty reduction has been much slower than in neighboring countries such as the People's Republic of China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Viet Nam. Economic growth has gone through boom and bust cycles, and recent episodes of moderate economic expansion have had limited impact on the poor. Great inequality across income brackets, regions, and sectors, as well as unmanaged population growth, are considered some of the key factors constraining poverty reduction efforts. This publication analyzes the causes of poverty and recommends ways to accelerate poverty reduction and achieve more inclusive growth. it also provides an overview of current government responses, strategies, and achievements in the fight against poverty and identifies and prioritizes future needs and interventions. The analysis is based on current literature and the latest available data, including the 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey.

This well-crafted book probes the key dimensions of Africa’s existential predicament. It constitutes an intellectual response to a gnawing “African situation”—the starting point for grasping Africa’s social and religious quest. Beyond split explanations of external versus internal factors (e.g., colonization/slavery vs. leadership/cultural values), this study accounts more comprehensively for emergent issues shaping this situation. The situation reflects a gamut of problems in traditional African religion and material culture, which hitherto defines African communality, polities, and destinies vis-à-vis the cosmos and nature. Thus, African religion and communities, each with its own attendant values, do not operate by critical engagement with larger issues of society and civilization, especially those shaped by the advent of (post-) modernity. Rather, they operate via adaptation. The communal drive for natural and social harmony inevitably produces a preservationist view of culture (“leaving things as they are”). This study takes an integrative approach to religion, society, and civilization; eschews dichotomies; and broadly defines and re-signifies life and wholeness as a true end of Africans’ quest today.