UNRISD Director, Sarah Cook, presented the Insitute's 2010 Flagship Report,
Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics, at Peking University, Beijing, on 18 October 2010.
The presentation of the report was organized as part of the high-level Poverty Reduction and Development Forum, organized by Peking University and the International Poverty Reduction Centre in China.
The overview of the report was translated into Chinese and published in collaboration with the School of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University.
About the Report
Poverty reduction is a central feature of the international development agenda and contemporary poverty reduction strategies increasingly focus on “targeting the poor”, yet poverty and inequality remain intractable foes.
Combating Poverty and Inequality argues that this is because many current approaches to reducing poverty and inequality fail to consider key institutional, policy and political dimensions that may be both causes of poverty and inequality, and obstacles to their reduction.
The report is structured around three main issues, which, it argues, are the critical elements of a sustainable and inclusive development strategy:
- patterns of growth and structural change (whether in the agricultural, industrial or service sectors) that generate and sustain jobs that are adequately remunerated and accessible to all, regardless of income or class status, gender, ethnicity or location;
- comprehensive social policies that are grounded in universal rights and that are supportive of structural change, social cohesion and democratic politics; and
- protection of civic rights, activism and political arrangements that ensure states are responsive to the needs of citizens and the poor have influence in how policies are made.
The report lays out a range of policies and institutional measures that countries can adopt to alleviate poverty and inequality. It will thus be of interest to policy, scholarly and activist audiences.