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East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

Poverty Reduction

Far from home in China: conversations with migrant workers searching for opportunities in urban centers

Submitted by Joe Qian on Fri, 2009-10-30 10:23
Quality Control Inspector Jiang Peng walks on scaffolding along the foundation of the water treatment facility.

While traveling through China recently, I had an opportunity to visit the Shanghai Urban Environment project in the emergent suburban district of Qingpu and spoke to a number of workers responsible for the implementation and completion of the project.

As with many infrastructure and urban development projects in China, the speed and magnitude can be astonishing, with hundreds of employees working around the clock to ensure timely completion. Work on the facility runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with construction workers from all over China contracted to work and live onsite until its completion in 2011. Once finished, it will improve water service, coverage, and waste water management in the region which will be essential for sustaining the increasing population and living standards.

A quick look at 60 years of China's development

Submitted by James I Davison on Thu, 2009-10-08 16:18

Last week’s 60th anniversary celebrations marking the founding of the People’s Republic of China seemed to generate a lot of coverage and interest on news and social media websites. Business magazine Fast Company used the occasion to consider 15 different development-related statistics – comparing then to now.

Most of the figures are striking, and the graphic’s triangles illustrate how rapid and staggering the changes have been in China in just six decades. Interesting data (although the magazine doesn't specify its sources) in the infographic include:

  • The average life expectancy has increased from 35 to 73 years old.
  • The rate of illiteracy was 80 percent in 1949 and is 9.1 percent now.
  • The enrollment rate for primary-school children went from 20 percent to 99.3 percent.

Take a closer look at the chart here. (Hat tip to Cool Infographics.)

'Facebook for farmers' brings microloans to people in rural China

Submitted by James I Davison on Wed, 2009-09-16 16:20

The founders of a microfinance website I came across a few months ago are giving an interesting, benevolent twist to social networking. At least, that’s one way of looking at Wokai.org, a non-profit organization benefiting entrepreneurs in rural China.

Wokai has been dubbed by some as a “Facebook for farmers,” yet it may be more comparable to well-known microfinance sites like Kiva, which allow people with an Internet connection to give loans directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Wokai, however, focuses solely on impoverished people living in rural China.

Indonesia's 'big bang' decentralization experiment: Helping poor regions spend resources well

Submitted by Wolfgang Fengler on Thu, 2009-08-20 12:40

After five years in Indonesia, my family and I have left this wonderful country and moved to Kenya. The last five years have been excellent years for Indonesia. The economy stabilized, growth resumed and services started to improve, although modestly and not in all areas. Indonesia still remains an underrated country, but this may change. Indonesia has only mildly been affected by the global crisis. After holding its second direct presidential election, where more than 100 million Indonesians cast their votes, the country can expect another five years of political and economic stability, and possibly some improvements in the business climate.

In my last blog on Indonesia, I’d like to focus on Indonesia’s decentralization experiment, which was put in place ten years ago and made effective on January 1, 2001. Indonesia’s decentralization was a by-product of its democratization after the dismantling of Suharto’s “new order” regime.  Indonesia then implemented one of the most ambitious decentralization programs of modern times, radically transferring responsibility and financial resources to lower levels of government. My colleagues Bert Hofman and Kai Kaiser coined the phrase “big bang decentralization” (pdf). Even though decentralization makes sense in a country covering three time zones and more than 17,000 islands, many were skeptical about this experiment, particularly in the central government.

Mongolia's growing shantytowns: the cold and toxic ger districts

Submitted by Dave Lawrence on Wed, 2009-07-08 14:06

Children breathe thick, toxic smog from thousands of stoves in Ulaanbaatar's ger districts, which are home to 60 percent of the city's population.

There’s no capital city anywhere in the world with a housing problem like Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Imagine a city of one million people. Then imagine 60 percent of them living in settlements without water, sanitation or basic infrastructure, often in traditional Mongolian felt tents, known as gers. Then imagine these people relying on wood- or coal-burning stoves for cooking and heating, with fuel costs eating up 40 percent of their income. Then imagine the discomfort of having to get up in the middle of the night when it’s -35 degrees Celsius to go to the bathroom – outdoors.

Worst of all, imagine you and your children breathing the thick, toxic smog from thousands of stoves 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Unfortunately, this is not imagination, this is the real situation for over a half million people living in the ger districts of the capital. Not a pretty picture.

Zai jian – Goodbye – See you again: a look back on China's progress upon leaving the World Bank

Submitted by David Dollar on Thu, 2009-07-02 10:46

This is my last week in the World Bank, after working at the institution for 20 years, the last five as country director for China and Mongolia.

A few weeks ago I had the unique opportunity to camp out on top of the Great Wall, which was a fitting exclamation mark at the end of my five years as the World Bank's China Country Director. It was a cloudy, drizzly day as we started, but then cleared up and turned into a lovely evening. The large group of kids we had with us slept in one of the guard towers along the wall, but I and a few others opted to sleep under the stars. The next morning opened with some mist, but then turned into a spectacular blue day. Some long-term Beijing residents hiking with us noted that they couldn’t recall ever seeing the countryside so green.

Beijing’s dry climate sets a limit on how green and blue it’s ever going to get, but the improvement over five years is noticeable and is one of the two most striking achievements of China in this period. In many cities, air pollution has declined as a result of policies that include banning the use of coal in inner cities, strengthening public transportation, discouraging car use (gasoline now costs 50% more than in the U.S.), moving heavy industry out of inner cities, and more stringent enforcement of environmental regulations.

What bang for the buck in food aid? New database helps you track nutritional impact

Submitted by Claudia Gabarain on Tue, 2009-05-26 22:45

The Food Aid Information System from the World Food Programme tracks data on food aid flows since 1988. Now it also links the quantity information on these deliveries to its nutritional impact, measured by indicators like Individual Requirements Met on Average. The data can then be sliced and sorted by commodity, donor, aid type (emergency, program...), recipient, and year.

So for example, how many individuals may be satisfied by the total food aid deliveries to East Asian and Pacific countries in 2007? See the chart to the right, and click on it to access the figures and download the data in Excel format.

Remarkable progress, remaining vulnerability among China's poor

Submitted by David Dollar on Tue, 2009-04-07 23:01

China's share of population living below the poverty line declined from 65 percent at the beginning of economic reform in 1981 to 4 percent in 2007.

At the height of the recent boom the U.S. household savings rate dropped to zero: the average American family saved nothing from its annual income of more than $38,000 per person. In China, by contrast, poor rural families earning less than $200 per person save 18 percent of their meager income. This is one of the striking findings of the World Bank poverty assessment released today.

The poverty study uses a wealth of household survey and village-level data to tell a fascinating story of progress and vulnerability. The progress is remarkable: the share of the population living below the World Bank's consumption poverty line for China declined from 65 percent at the beginning of economic reform (1981) to 4 percent in 2007. The pace of poverty reduction varied over these 26 years. One of the periods of most rapid poverty reduction has been the boom time since China joined the World Trade Organization. Poverty declined from 16 percent in 2001 to 4 percent in just six years.

Laos' economy less affected by crisis, but sustaining growth a challenge

Submitted by Katia Vostroknutova on Tue, 2009-04-07 09:21

With a relatively unsophisticated economy that is agriculture- and natural resource-based, Laos has been affected by the crisis less than some neighboring countries.

In the aftermath of the 1997 Asian crisis, Lao PDR grew steadily, on average by 6 percent a year in real terms. Laos also impressively lifted one-eighth of its population out of poverty between 1993 and 2003. Laos aims to graduate from a low-income country status by 2020. The current global financial crisis, however, will slow down the progress in poverty reduction, as well as the growth rate and reduce government ability to invest in health, education, and infrastructure, therefore lowering Laos' chances to fulfill this goal (for more, see the World Bank's East Asia & Pacific Update, a regional economic assessment released today).

One of the poorest countries in the world, Laos is a small land-locked country in Southeast Asia, bordering and trading with China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia. Laos has a relatively unsophisticated economy that is agriculture- and natural resource-based, although industry as share of GDP has been growing steadily in the last decade. The population of around 6 million people engages mostly in subsistence agriculture.

So far, Laos has been affected by the crisis less than other countries, because:

Mongolia: Stretching your legs as far as the blanket allows

Submitted by David Dollar on Mon, 2009-02-16 01:08
Local meets global in Ulaanbataar: ice sculptures of Chinggis Khaan in front of the popular Grand Khaan Irish Pub.

It was more than 20 degrees below zero (centigrade) as we visited Ulaanbataar this week.  If you want to understand Mongolian culture and politics you have to visit this coldest of the world’s capitals in the dead of winter.  My wife joined me on this trip and provided some useful perspective since it was her first trip since summer 2005.  What struck her immediately was the absence of traditional Mongolian clothing, which had been prevalent four years before, and the explosive growth of cars and traffic, which had not.  Since 2005 Mongolia has undergone a mining boom as the price of its main export, copper, climbed from historical levels of about $2,000 per ton to a high of $8,685 in mid-2008. 

The commodity price boom meant that Mongolia earned far more dollars for roughly the same physical volume of exports.   This increased income reached a lot of the population through increased government spending and transfers and the real estate and construction booms.  People could afford a lot more imported products including cars, clothing, appliances, and an increasing share of their food.