Regional Development and Poverty Reduction

To what extent can subnational regional development reduce poverty? How strong are locational factors in the determination of individual poverty?

In most developing countries, the poor are disproportionately concentrated in backward areas. In large countries where there are usually substantial differences in per-capita incomes across regions, the issue of "poor areas or poor people" is central for Bank staff writing Poverty Assessments and designing anti-poverty strategies. In this section, we present readings and references dealing with the regional aspects of poverty analysis and policy, and a sample of poverty assessments that include some coverage of the regional distribution of poverty.

Poor Areas.