World poverty is an important book offering fresh insights into how to tackle poverty worldwide. With contributions from leading scholars in the field both internationally and in the UK, the book asks whether existing international and national policies are likely to succeed in reducing poverty across the world. It concludes that they are not and that a radically different international strategy is needed.
This book is a companion volume to Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty (The Policy Press, 2001). The focus of World poverty is on anti-poverty policies rather than the scale, causes and measurement of poverty. A wide range of countries is discussed including countries such as China and India, which have rarely been covered elsewhere.
The interests of the industrialised and developing world are given equal attention and are analysed together. Policies intended to operate at different levels - international, regional, national and sub-national - ranging from the policies of international agencies like the UN and the World Bank through to national governments, groups of governments and local and city authorities - are examined. Key aspects of social policy, like 'targeting' and means-testing, de-regulation and privatisation, are considered in detail.
World poverty will become a definitive point of reference for anyone working, studying or researching in the poverty field.