Using the Survey of Living Conditions in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar of India and the second round of the Vietnam Living Standards Survey, this paper examines whether and to what extent rural consumption inequality of the poor differs in the two countries. While these two countries have experienced significant growth since the early 1990s, they have different institutional arrangements. As a result...

BACKGROUND Uganda implemented health sector reforms to make services more accessible to the population. An assessment of the likely impact of these reforms is important for informing policy. This paper describes the changes in utilization of health services that occurred among the poor and those in rural areas between 2002/3 and 2005/6 and associated factors. METHODS Secondary data analysis w...

BACKGROUND Maternal mortality and morbidity are public health problems in Nepal. In rural communities, many women give birth at home without the support of a skilled birth attendant, despite the existence of rural birthing centers. The aim of this study was to explore the barriers and provide pragmatic recommendations for better service delivery and use of rural birthing centers. METHODS We c...

The DHS Wealth Index originally was constructed from existing data on household assets, services, and amenities in order to tabulate health, population, nutrition, education, and other indicators according to economic status. The Wealth Index has proved to be one of the most useful background characteristics available from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data. It is now standard in DHS ...

poverty is the most serious threat to natural resources and the environment and most of the poor are rural-based who engage in various agricultural activities. land is a critical asset for the rural poor and lacking means to appropriately intensify agriculture which compels the poor to either overuse or misuse this natural resource base to meet basic needs. this study presents empirical relatio...

IFAD: Rural Enterprise Policy iv RATIONALE: MICRO AND SMALL ENTERPRISES AND POVERTY REDUCTION Role of the Off-Farm Sector in Reducing Poverty 2 Small-Scale Rural Enterprise and the Rural Economy 3 IFAD and Rural Enterprise 4 Role of the Off-Farm Sector vis-à-vis IFAD's Strategic Framework and Regional Strategies 5 DEVELOPING MICRO AND SMALL ENTERPRISES FOR THE POOR IN RURAL AREAS: DEFINITION, L...

Rural development in both the Third World and the United States suffers from many perceived failures and the lack of a theoretically rich conceptual framework by which effective rural development policies can be fashioned. Drawing upon Third World development literature, a perspective for domestic rural development is suggested. Development is defined by interdependence of increasingly speciali...

Enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty

Does Relative Income Matter for the Very Poor? Evidence from Rural Ethiopia We studied whether relative income has an impact on subjective well-being among extremely poor people. Contrary to the findings in developed countries, where relative income has shown a significant and negative impact on subjective well-being, we cannot reject the hypothesis that relative income has no impact on subject...

South Africa’s poor rural communities have been provided ICT services through universal service access initiatives such as telecentres for some years. The objective of such initiatives and the soon to be introduced under-serviced area operators is to facilitate the development of poor rural communities. This paper discusses the successes and shortcomings of deployed ICT solutions. Service provi...