The 2000 Report will tackle poverty and be led by Ravi Kanbur, of Cornell University in the USA, working with a team of Bank staff including Michael Walton, Director, Poverty Reduction. A big consultation exercise with academics, NGOs and government officials has just started, and NGOs are discussing ways to organise their inputs.
A briefing note on the Report’s planned approaches and consultation mechanisms is available from the Bank (cgranadabarrera@worldbank.org). In brief it recognises that:
- standards of living must be measured examining many factors, not just levels of income and consumption;
- economic, social, political, demographic, environmental, institutional and policy factors are all important;
- opportunities must be balanced against risks of increased inequality, vulnerability, social exclusion and marginalization.
The Report aims to have a micro-level perspective, bringing in poor peoples’ own experiences of and responses to poverty. It will also assess the impact of the Bank’s current poverty strategy outlined in the 1990 WDR (labour intensive growth and investing in poor peoples’ human capital).
The WDR for 1999 will tackle the weighty themes of “The Future of Development Policy: the Impact of Globalisation, Urbanisation, and Localisation”. Contact: Shahid Yusuf, lead author, syusuf@worldbank.org.
