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Botswana Poverty AssessmentLiving conditions of Botswana have improved over the past decade and poverty has reduced significantly. This decrease was accompanied by a considerable decline in both depth and severity of poverty, indicating that consumption has improved among the poor. While rural areas led the poverty reduction, the share of the poor living in urban areas has increased. Botswana’s progress toward reduction of extreme poverty and inequality was among the world’s strongest in the second half of 2000s. During this period, the economic growth has been strongly pro-poor. Botswana is one of the top performers in Africa when measured by annual consumption distribution growth for the bottom 40 percentile. However, despite these noteworthy improvements, inequality remains high. The study concludes that with adequate macro and social policies, and a strong focus on improving equity, Botswana has a historical opportunity to build on recent achievements and move towards eradicating extreme poverty within one generation. The analyses was conducted in close collaboration with the Statistics Botswana, utilizing the data generated through the nationally representative households income and expenditure surveys conducted by Statistics Botswana in 2002/2003 and 2009/2010. The report benefited greatly from the leadership by the Poverty Eradication Unit.
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Croatia : Social Impact of the Crisis and Building ResilienceThis report analyzes the impact of the
 global economic crisis on the labor market and poverty in
 Croatia, and discusses the effectiveness of social safety
 net policies in response to the crisis. It also presents
 options to enhance the cost-effectiveness of social policy
 in Croatia in response to an economic downturn. It argues
 that the impact of the crisis on employment and poverty was
 substantial, but the policy response was limited. There is
 substantial room to enhance the efficiency of the social
 protection system in Croatia within the existing resource
 envelope, and build resilience against potential future
 economic shocks. The report is divided into five sections.
 Section one provides a backdrop for further analysis by
 presenting recent macroeconomic developments. Section two
 looks at the labor market effects of the crisis. Section
 three examines the impact of the crisis on poverty. Section
 four assesses the effectiveness of employment and social
 safety net programs in Croatia. The final section suggests
 options to enhance the effectiveness of employment and
 social safety net policies in responding to economic fluctuations.
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China - From Poor Areas to Poor People : China’s Evolving Poverty Reduction Agenda - An Assessment of Poverty and Inequality in ChinaChina's progress in poverty
 reduction over the last 25 years is enviable. One cannot
 fail to be impressed by what this vast nation of 1.3 billion
 people has achieved in so little time. In terms of a wide
 range of indicators, the progress has been remarkable.
 Poverty in terms of income and consumption has been
 dramatically reduced. Progress has also been substantial in
 terms of human development indicators. Most of the
 millennium development goals have either already been
 achieved or the country is well on the way to achieving
 them. As a result of this progress, the country is now at a
 very different stage of development than it was at the dawn
 of the economic reforms at the beginning of the 1980s.
 China's poverty reduction performance has been even
 more striking. Between 1981 and 2004, the fraction of the
 population consuming below this poverty line fell from 65
 percent to 10 percent, and the absolute number of poor fell
 from 652 million to 135 million, a decline of over half a
 billion people. The most rapid declines in poverty, in both
 the poverty rate and the number of poor, occurred during the
 6th, 8th, and 10th plans. During the 7th plan period the
 number of poor actually rose, while in the 9th plan period,
 the poverty rate declined only marginally. But the pace of
 poverty reduction resumed between 2001 and 2004 and there
 are indications that during the first couple of years of the
 11th plan poverty has continued to decline rapidly. The most
 recent official estimate of rural poverty in China for 2007
 puts the number of poor at 14.79 million, or less than 2
 percent of the rural population. While there is no official
 urban poverty line, estimates by others have found poverty
 levels in urban areas to be negligible using an urban
 poverty line that is comparable to the official poverty line
 for rural areas. These estimates thus suggest that only
 about 1 percent of China's population is currently in
 extreme poverty. Notwithstanding this tremendous success,
 the central thesis of this report is that the task of
 poverty reduction in many ways continues and in some
 respects has become more demanding.