This paper provides an overview of the
fiscal problems faced by five urban agglomerations in India,
namely, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, and Pune. It
analyzes the fiscal health of the five urban agglomerations,
quantifies their revenue capacities and expenditure needs,
and draws policy recommendations on the means to reduce the
gaps between revenue raising capacities and expenditure
needs. The main findings suggest that, except for five small

This study on Bangladesh Dhaka-improving
living conditions for the urban poor reflects a
comprehensive look at poverty in Dhaka with an aim to
provide the basis for an urban poverty reduction strategy
for the Government of Bangladesh, local authorities, donors,
and NGOs. While the needs in Dhaka are enormous, this study
focuses on analyzing those critical for the poor -
understanding the characteristics and dynamics of poverty,

The purpose of this guidance note is to
bridge precisely identify how to implement World Bank
resettlement policies in the context of infrastructure
projects affecting South Asian largest cities, with a focus
on the impacts on poor areas and slums. The guidance note is
intended as a tool to help decision makers in Government
agencies and in the Bank, particularly in respect of the
main aspects: 1) methods to assess and evaluate resettlement

Post-Industrial East Asian Cities
analyzes urban developments and policies responsible for the
growth of producer services and creative industries. This
study is based on the findings of firm surveys conducted in
East Asia and a review of the data and literature on several
key regional cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul,
Bangkok and Tokyo) that are transitioning away from
traditional manufacturing activities.

In 2000 the World Bank made a corporate
commitment to organize a small states Forum each year in the
context of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World
Bank annual meetings. The forum is intended to raise the
profile of small states issues and provide an opportunity
for small state officials to bring their views and ideas to
the attention of the international community. Forty-eight
World Bank members comprise the small states forum, all but

The spike in food prices between 2005
and the first half of 2008 has highlighted the
vulnerabilities of poor consumers to higher prices of
agricultural goods and generated calls for massive policy
action. This paper provides a formal assessment of the
direct and indirect impacts of higher prices on global
poverty using a representative sample of 63 to 93 percent of
the population of the developing world. To assess the direct

The Ghana Country Environment Analysis
(CEA) has thus been formulated to assist the Government of
Ghana and its development partners to: (a) assess the
country's environmental priorities in key sectors, the
environmental implications of key economic and sector
policies, and the country's institutional capacity to
address them; and (b) find practical management,
institutional, and policy solutions to handle issues of

This assessment of poverty and
inequality comes at an important juncture for Kenya. The
December 2007 elections and subsequent pronouncements of the
newly formed Grand Coalition have underlined the salience of
these issues to ordinary Kenyans, and for policy makers. The
violence in early 2008 highlighted the importance of
addressing poverty and inequality as major goals in their
own right, but also for instrumental reasons, as major goals

Brazil's inequalities in welfare
and poverty across and within regions can be accounted for
by differences in household attributes and returns to those
attributes. This paper uses Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions at
the mean as well as at different quantiles of welfare
distributions on regionally representative household survey
data (2002-03 Household Budget Survey). The analysis finds
that household attributes account for most of the welfare

This report reviews China's water
scarcity situation, assesses the policy and institutional
requirements for addressing it, and recommends key areas for
strengthening and reform. It is a synthesis of the main
findings and recommendations from analytical work and case
studies prepared under the World Bank Analytical and
Advisory Assistance (AAA) program entitled 'Addressing
China's Water Scarcity: from Analysis to Action.'

The measurement of inequality of
opportunity has hitherto not been attempted in a number of
countries because of data limitations. This paper proposes
two alternative approaches to circumventing the missing data
problems in countries where a demographic and health survey
and an ancillary household expenditure survey are available.
One method relies only on the demographic and health survey,
and constructs a wealth index as a measure of economic

This paper evaluates the impact of the
Thailand Village and Urban Revolving Fund on household
expenditure, income, and assets. The revolving fund was
launched in 2001 when the Government of Thailand promised to
provide a million baht (about $22,500) to every village and
urban community in Thailand as working capital for
locally-run rotating credit associations. The money about
$2 billion in total was quickly disbursed to locally-run