Fighting Poverty

In this hard-hitting polemical Karnani demonstrates what is wrong with today's approaches to reducing poverty. He proposes an eclectic approach to poverty reduction that emphasizes the need for business, government and civil society to partner together to create employment opportunities for the poor.

Fighting Poverty with Facts: Community-based monitoring systems

Essays examine antipoverty policies of the last twenty years and discuss welfare, health care for the poor, job training, education programs, family structure, and civil rights.

Information and communication have always opened opportunities for the poor to earn income, reduce isolation, and respond resiliently to emergencies. With mobile phone use exploding across the developing world, even marginalized communities are now benefiting from modern communication tools. This book explores the impacts of this unprecedented technological change. It looks at how the poor use information and communication technologies (ICTs). How they benefit from mobile devices, computers, and the Internet, and what insights can research provide to promote affordable access to ICTs, so that communities across the developing world can take advantage of the opportunities they offer.

In this this timely study of the different approaches of America and Europe to the problems of domestic inequality and poverty, the authors describe just how different the two continents are in the level of State engagement in the redistribution of income. They discuss various possible economic and sociological explanations for the difference, including different attitudes to the poor, notions of social responsibility, and attitudes to race.

This important book brings together many of the leading contributors in the field and provides a compelling manifesto for change in social justice.

US President Barack Obama has called economic inequality the “defining issue of our time.” It has inspired the “Occupy” movements, made a French economist into a global celebrity, and given us a new expression – the “one percent.” But is our preoccupation with inequality really justified? Or wise? In his new book, William Watson argues that focusing on inequality is both an error and a trap. It is an error because much inequality is “good,” the reward for thrift, industry, and invention. It is a trap because it leads us to fixate on the top end of the income distribution, rather than on those at the bottom who need help most. In fact, if we respond to growing inequality by fighting capitalism rather than poverty, we may end up both poorer and less equal. Explaining the complexities of modern economics in a clear, accessible style, The Inequality Trap is the must-read rejoinder to the idea that fighting inequality should be our top policy priority.

In 1997, Mexico launched a new incentive-based poverty reduction program to enhance the human capital of those living in extreme poverty. This book presents a case study of Progresa-Oportunidades, focusing on the main factors that have contributed to the program's sustainability, policies that have allowed it to operate at the national level, and future challenges.