Developmental Pathways to Poverty Reduction

In 2000, governments made a commitment through the Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty and hunger by half by 2015. However, despite the reorientation of much of aid policy towards the fight against poverty, there are concerns that many countries will be unable to make meaningful dents in their levels of poverty, let alone meet the lofty goals. At the centre of these concerns is whether countries are following the right development path, and whether lessons have been learned from the strategies of newly industrialized countries that drastically reduced poverty relatively quickly and without much dependence on international development assistance. This book is about 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 growth and redistribution. It draws on the experiences of countries that transformed their economies and reduced poverty in very short periods.

Yusuf Bangura teaches international political economy at the Department of Political Science, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. He was a research coordinator at the UN Research Institute for Social Development from 1990-2012, and lead author of the Institute's flagship report Combating Poverty and Inequality: Stuctural Change, Social Policy and Politics (2010).

The book is available in hardback or as an Ebook (EPUB and PDF).


Contents

Introduction
1. Developmental Pathways to Poverty Reduction; Yusuf Bangura

PART I: DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES
2. Employment, Economic Development and Poverty Reduction; James Heintz
3. Taxation, Developmental State Capacity and Poverty Reduction; Jonathan Di John
4. The Effectiveness of IMF/World Bank-Funded Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers; Ricardo Gottschalk
5. Poverty Reduction and the Politics of Bilateral Donor Relations; Tom Lavers
6. Politics of Growth and Redistribution in a Democratic Context; Yusuf Bangura
7. Agrarian Social Pacts and Poverty Reduction; Adam Sheingate

PART II: CASE STUDIES
8. Economic Development and Poverty Reduction in Korea: Governing Multifunctional Institutions; Huck-ju Kwon and Ilcheong Yi
9. Growing Wealth, Poverty Avoidance and Management in Singapore; Chua Beng Huat
10. Development Strategies and Poverty Reduction in China; Jean C. Oi
11. The Unsocial Leviathan: Interests, Institutions and Social Policy in Brazil; Marcus André Melo
12. Ireland's Boom-Bust Cycles: The Elusive Search for a Balanced Development; Peadar Kirby