How can public policy enhance female employment and empower women economically as countries urbanize?

Urbanisation and labour force participation can be powerful drivers of women economic empowerment. This paper reviews the empowering and disempowering effects of urbanisation on the the main areas of work performed by women in cities and analyses the interventions which have been implemented to support the different types of female urban livelihoods

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Good governance, local government, accountability and service delivery in Tanzania

A performance index for local governance in Tanzania needs to provide a clear indication of how effectively local government and partners are delivering public services, supporting livelihoods and ensuring peace and security.  This paper sets out the context of good governance, local governance, accountability and local service delivery in Tanzania.  

Authors: Anna Mdee and Lisa Thorley

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Improving the delivery of public services What role could a local governance index play?

One of the most powerful ideas in development in recent years has been good governance. This review of available evidence considers how the performance of local governance can be improved in relation to the better delivery of services, through the use of a local governance performance index. It also considers how the public tracking of locally meaningful measures of governance can be used to improve the accountability of local government bureaucracies and politicians.

Authors: Anna Mdee and Lisa Thorley

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Compatible or contradictory? The challenge of inclusive structural economic and environmental transformation

Multiple transformations are being sought in our societies in the face of the accelerating risk of climate change and the need to eradicate poverty. This paper sets out to explore current evidence and debate on structural economic transformation and environmental (green) transformation in relation to the eradication of poverty. 

Authors: Anna Mdee, Richard Emmott and Alberto Lemma

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Ensuring Escapes from Poverty are Sustained in Rural Ethiopia

This report examines why some households in Ethiopia are able to escape poverty and remain out of it—that is, they experience sustained escapes from poverty—while others escape poverty only to return to living in it again – that is, they experience transitory escapes. The report investigates the resources (land, livestock, and value of assets), attributes (household composition and education level), and activities (including jobs, engagement in non-farm activities and migration) of households that enable them to escape poverty sustainably and minimize the likelihood of returning to living in poverty again.
Authors: Chiara Mariotti and Vidya Diwakar
 

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Conference Report - CPAN-ADB Conference on Pro-poorest Growth and the SDGs: emerging issues

The international community has committed to Leaving No One Behind. This means poverty eradication shouldn’t count as such if certain people are systematically excluded from it. Growth is a key means of implementing these commitments. So how can growth occur in a way which includes the poorest on good terms? These were the premises of the Conference ‘Incorporating Pro-Poorest Growth in the SDGs: Moving Beyond the MDGs’ implemented by CPAN and the Asian Development Bank in Manila in April 2016. 

 

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Ensuring Escapes from Poverty are Sustained in Uganda

Since the early 1990s, Uganda has experienced substantial reductions in poverty. However, as people have moved out of poverty, the number of people living at a level less than twice the poverty line—termed the ‘insecure non-poor’ in the Ugandan context—has risen. This report focuses on ‘transitory poverty escapes’, i.e., on those households which, having successfully escaped from poverty, return to living in it once again. Specifically, it examines why some households are able to escape poverty and remain out of it—that is, they experience sustained escapes from poverty—while others escape poverty only to return to living in it again in the future. 

Authors: Lucy Scott, Vidya Diwakar, Moses Okech

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Anti-discrimination policies and programmes in low-and middle-income countries: Experiences in political participation, education and labour markets

This report presents the findings of a rigorous review of evidence on anti-discrimination and affirmative action policies and legislation in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).  It focuses on three areas: political participation, education and labour markets. 

Authors: Rachel Marcus, Anna Mdee and Ella Page

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Financial Inclusion Policy Guide: Enhanced Resilience through Savings and Insurance via Linkages and Digital Technology

The objective of this policy guide is to provide policymakers and programme designers with an up-to-date view of what needs to be done to include the poorest people in financial services, and by doing so make a dent in their poverty. It selects savings and insurance as two aspects of financial services that are most likely to build poor people’s resilience in the face of the multiple risks they face – a necessary precursor to any investments they might make to get out of poverty.

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Policy Brief: Financial Inclusion in Nigeria

This policy brief provides a situation analysis on financial inclusion in Nigeria, including a short analysis of how it may figure in chronic poverty, and processes of escaping poverty and impoverishment. It also goes on to assess the relevance of the four potential promising avenues identified in the global CPAN Financial inclusion Policy Guide (Smith et al 2015) for including the poorest people in Nigeria. This leads to a commentary on the e Nigerian Financial Inclusion Strategy.

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Strengthening social justice to address intersecting inequalities post-2015

The people most likely to be left behind by development are those facing ‘intersecting inequalities’, or economic deficits intersecting with discrimination and exclusion on the grounds of identity and locational disadvantage.

The experience of seven countries (Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, India, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Nepal) shows that key ingredients for addressing intersecting inequalities are: social movements demanding changes in the ‘rules of the game’; political trajectories and processes of constitutional change that facilitate and actualize these changes; social guarantees, opportunity enhancements and developmental affirmative actions as well as specific policies and programmes which show commitment to reduce intersecting inequalities over time.

The post-2015 agenda can help establish global norms which will support and encourage mobilisation to tackle intersecting inequalities, including a strong commitment to universal quality basic services, and the development of country-specific frameworks of targets and indicators monitoring intersecting inequalities

Authors: Veronica Paz Arauco, Haris Gazdar, Paula Hevia-Pacheco, Naila Kabeer, Amanda Lenhardt, Syeda Quratulain Masood, Haider Naqvi, Nandini Nayak, Andrew Norton, Nidhi Sadana Sabharwal, Elisa Scalise, Andrew Shepherd, Deepak Thapa, Sukhadeo Thorat, D. Hien Tran, Leandro Vergara-Camus, Tassew Woldehanna, Chiara Mariotti.

Click here to download the Report

The following background papers prepared for the report are also available: 

Pakistan (Gazdar, Masood and Naqvi)

India (Nayak)

Nepal (Thapa)

Latin America (Hevia and Vergara-Camus)

Land tenure (Scalise and Tran)

Bolivia (Paz Arauco)

India (Thorat and Sabharwal)

Translating Growth into Poverty Reduction.Beyond the Numbers

Edited by Flora Kessy, Oswald Mashindano, Andrew Shepherd & Lucy Scott

    

Tanzania is a politically stable, much aided country that has consistently grown economically during the first decade of the millennium, while also improving its human development indicators. However, poverty has remained persistent, particularly within rural areas. This collaborative work delves into the reasons why this is so and what can be done to improve the record.
The book is the product of both Tanzanian and international poverty experts, based on largely qualitative research undertaken within Tanzania by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC). The authors highlight and discuss the importance of macro- and micro-level causes of the persistence of poverty.  The latter, on which the book is focused, centre around a negative dynamic affecting a large number of poor households in which widespread failure to provide household food security undermines gender relationships and reduces the possibility of saving and asset accumulation which is necessary for escaping poverty. This results in very low upward mobility. Vulnerability is widespread and resilience against shocks minimal, even for those who are not absolutely poor. Through an in-depth and broad analysis of poverty in Tanzania, the book provides alternative conclusions to those often repeated in the poverty discourse in international and local arenas.
The conclusions were reached with the specific aim of informing political and policy debates within Tanzania.

Click here to download the book

Financial inclusion and chronic poverty: access to savings and insurance services in Tanzania

This brief examines the current extent of financial inclusion in Tanzania – focusing particularly on the chronically poor – and also specifically on access to savings and insurance services. This is because of the increasing body of evidence about the role which the two services can play in helping households to escape poverty and, by implication, to manage shocks and build their resilience.

Authors: Lucy Scott and William Smith

Photo Credit: Panos Pictures

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