Successes in Anti-Poverty (ILO, 2000, 232 p.)

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The International Labour Organization

ILO Publications

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. The problem and the approach

2. Outline

3. Anti-poverty success: National-level performance

(i) Assessing performance: Poverty, damage, and the level of resources

(ii) Poverty, GNP, consumption: Links and positive deviants

(iii) Delinking poverty and resource scarcity from damage and misery?

(iv) Poverty and damage: An assessment

4. Credit: Rules for success in anti-poverty action32

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(i) Measuring success

(ii) Successful pro-poor credit: Towards synthesis - and some problems

(iii) Thirteen rules for successful pro-poor credit

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1. Respect fungibility of credit

2. Seek poverty focus, but by means other than direct targeting

3. Void anti-poor rules and actions

4. Find alternatives to physical collateral

5. Cat poor borrowers' transactions costs

6. Reduce covariance of repayment, e.g. by nesting peer-monitoring groups

7. Avoid lending monopolies

8. Ensure that extra credit can be productive before raising its supply

9. Subsidize transactions costs and administration, not interest

10. Avoid politicizing or softening repayment but anticipate emergencies

11. Infrastructure and education may complement credit

12. Savings requirements improve borrowers' performance

13. Create incentives to lenders and borrowers for repayment

5. Public works to create employment for the poor

(i) Introduction

(ii) Scale

(iii) Apparent impact on the poor

(iv) Targeting on the poor

(v) Public works: Rules for success against poverty

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1. Designing employment for low opportunity cost

2. Seek alternatives to direct targeting - but wage effects are complex

3. Use scheme rules and conditions to discriminate for the poor

4. Allow for poor workers' frequent physical difficulties

5. Minimize poor participants' transactions costs

6. Reduce covariate stresses on public works resources

7. Use retailer, employer, and public works competition ''for the poor''

8. Before starting, check that low demand for labour causes poverty

9. Subsidize coverage, sustainability, graduation - but seldom above market wages

10. Encourage grassroots pressure groups to improve the scheme

11. In performance and outreach, employment schemes complement others

12. Build up capacity of schemes and workers before works begin

13. Use performance incentives for officials and participants

6. Land, farming, social services, food, towns: Testing rules of anti-poverty success; implications for governments, NGOs

(i) Introduction

(ii) Land reform

(iii) Agricultural growth and technology

(iv) Health, education and poverty reduction

(v) Food distribution and subsidization51

(vi) Whatever happened to the towns?

7. Conclusion: The ''Rules of success against poverty'' reviewed

Appendices

Appendix A: Some issues in poverty measurement

Appendix B: Predicted poverty and the outliers

Appendix C: Analysis of positive deviants

Appendix D: Comparison of results with those of Anand and Ravallion

Appendix E: New international evidence on resources, poverty reduction and human development

Bibliography

Other ILO publications

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