Poverty reduction is now a central feature of the international development agenda. Lending programmes of the international financial institutions require recipient governments in low-income countries to develop strategies that will reduce the incidence of poverty in their societies. Bilateral donors focus their aid and debt relief on countries perceived to be pursuing "good" poverty reduction strategies. The Millennium Development Goals commit governments to halve the incidence of poverty and hunger by 2015.
Such policy initiatives have been lauded for placing poverty at the core of the development agenda. But many observers have also criticized the lack of attention to wider issues of development and social policy. This suggests the need for new approaches.
This major UNRISD research initiative aims to contribute to debates on new policy approaches to poverty reduction.
The research will:
- assess a range of contemporary approaches to poverty reduction, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs);
- identify key institutional, policy and political issues that are not being addressed in current poverty reduction strategies; and
- examine the contradictions, complementarities and synergies between different components of "policy regimes", including social, labour market and macroeconomic policies, and political and regulatory institutions.
Among the findings of UNRISD research on
Social Policy in a Development Context (2000–2005) informing this new research are that poverty eradication is always embedded in social and development policy; that effective social policy against poverty must address issues of redistribution, production, protection and reproduction; and that policies and institutions related to each of these aspects must work in harmony.
The research will engage with the current policy debates on poverty reduction from a developmental and social policy perspective. It will contribute to policy coherence and to an understanding of how the political and institutional context, and social and economic policy, affect poverty reduction and should work more synergistically to promote inclusive and equitable development. This is in consonance with a social and human development approach to poverty reduction.
The project consists of two sets of activities. The first deals with research undertaken in eight case studies that historically have involved the state as an active agent of development and that can boast of some growth spells and attempts at structural transformation. These case studies are
Botswana,
Brazil,
Costa Rica,
India,
Kenya,
Malaysia,
South Africa and
China (Taiwan Province). In addition, there will be
overview papers on China, Finland, Ireland, the Republic of Korea, Mozambique, Singapore, Sri Lanka, the former USSR and Viet Nam.
The second set of activities involves preparatory work for the UNRISD
Flagship Report on Poverty, to be published in 2010. The report will draw inputs from the case studies and overview papers, past UNRISD work, and current projects related to issues of poverty and inequality being conducted under several other UNRISD programmes.
Poverty Reduction and Policy Regimes Highlights