Developmental Pathways To Poverty Reduction

This book looks at developmental pathways to poverty reduction that emphasize employment-centred structural change, social policies that both protect citizens and contribute to economic development, and types of politics that support economic transformation and participation of the poor in growth processes.

'ICT Pathways to Poverty Reduction' presents a conceptual framework to analyse how poverty dynamics change over time and to shed light on whether ICT access benefits the poor as well as the not-so-poor. Essential reading for policymakers, researchers, and academics in international development or ICT for development.

First Published in 2009. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book looks at developmental pathways to poverty reduction that emphasize employment-centred structural change, social policies that both protect citizens and contribute to economic development, and types of politics that support economic transformation and participation of the poor in growth processes.

How private firms contribute to economic mobility and poverty reduction and what governments can do to enhance their contributions is the theme of this book. The positive role (often underemphasized) the private sector plays in economic development is looked at. Also the labour market and how various mechanisms in the economy interact to affect conditions for people as workers and as consumers. The links among the business environment, private sector development, economic growth, poverty reduction and economic mobility are also examined.

Poverty is still widespread in Latin America, in spite of over five decades of international development efforts to eradicate it. While some progress was made during the first decade of the new Millennium, at least until the onset of the global food and economic crises, there are still over one hundred and eighty million people in the region who unable to meet their basic needs. This is the ‘poverty problematic’ that is at the center of this book. It addresses what are perhaps the most important questions of our time: What are the root causes of poverty? And how can it be overcome? Also, with regards to the recent progress in the so-called war against poverty, the editors ask: How real is this progress? What or whose actions are responsible for this achievement? Through a critical analysis of public policies and development pathways, Poverty and Development in Latin America provides nuanced responses to these questions. The major conclusion reached and shared by the editors is that poverty reduction cannot be sustained with an anti-poverty strategy based only on social inclusion and economic assistance, or humanitarian relief. It requires a substantive change in the structure of inequality, and a confrontation of the relations of production and power that sustain this structure.

Seekings and Nattrass explain why poverty persisted in South Africa after the transition to democracy in 1994. The book examines how public policies both mitigated and reproduced poverty, and explains how and why these policies were adopted. The analysis offers lessons for the study of poverty elsewhere in the world.

Few countries have achieved social development, which requires simultaneously securing market and social incorporation (good jobs and access to social services). This book reviews Costa Rica's experience as one of the few successful cases of double incorporation in the periphery.