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The objective of the paper is to examine the profile and determinants of urban poverty in the two largest cities in Vietnam – Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh. The paper also investigates the dynamic aspect of urban poverty in Vietnam.

The authors use regression and data from the 2009 Urban Poverty Survey to examine the determinants of poverty in Vietnam. To analyse the poverty dynamics, an approach by Carter and May is used to decompose poverty into structural and stochastic poverty.

Using the poverty line of 12,000 thousand VND/person/year, the poverty incidence is estimated at 17.4 percent for Hanoi and 12.5 percent for Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City. There is a large proportion of the poor who are found stochastically poor. Hanoi has higher rates of structural poverty than HCM City. The proportion of structurally poor and stochastically non‐poor is rather small. Overall, the poor have fewer assets than the non‐poor. The poor also have poorer housing conditions, especially substantially lower access to tap water than the non‐poor. Heads of the poor households tend to have lower education and unskilled work than the heads of the non‐poor households.

In cities of Vietnam, a large proportion of the poor are found stochastically poor.

An axiomatic approach is used to propose a measure of extreme poverty which is not only multidimensional in nature, but also recognizes the fact that there are interaction effects between different deprivations, and that the length of time during which deprivations are felt may also have a negative impact on household well-being. The proposed definition of extreme poverty formalizes an approach developed by Joseph Wresinski, the founder of the International Movement ATD Fourth World.

The author proposes analyzing the dynamics of income positions using dynamic panel ordered probit models. The author disentangles, simultaneously, the roles of state dependence and heterogeneity (observed and non-observed) in explaining income position persistence, such as poverty persistence and affluence persistence. The author applies the approach to Chile exploiting longitudinal data from the P-CASEN 2006–2009. First, the author finds that income position mobility at the bottom and the top of the income distribution is much higher than expected, showing signs that income mobility in the case of Chile might be connected to economic insecurity. Second, the observable individual characteristics have a much stronger impact than true state dependence to explain individuals’ current income position in the income distribution extremes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dynamic relationship between policies related to educational provision and both educational participation and occupational outcomes in Brazil, using PNAD and RAIS-Migra data.

Outcomes are examined using: static multinomial logit analysis, and structural dynamic discrete choice modelling. The latter approach, coupled with the quality of the RAIS-Migra data source, allows the authors to evaluate the education policy impacts over time.

The main results show that the education level raises the propensity that the individual will be in formal sector work or still in education, and reduces the probability of the other outcomes. Transition into non-manual formal sector work following education may, however, occur via a spell of manual work.

This is the first study of occupational destination to be conducted in a rapidly developing country using high-quality panel data and appropriate dynamic methods, and as such makes an important contribution in confirming that increased supply of highly skilled workers enhances occupational attainment in this context.

It is imperative that microcredit organisations (MCOs) have a high level of awareness of the environmental context in which their clients pursue their livelihoods. This is particularly true for regions that experience regular environmental and economic shocks. However, to date this level of analysis has been largely absent from impact studies. The purpose of this paper is to overcome this lack of contextual analysis by using Bangladesh as a pertinent example.

Drawing on empirical data and a wide range of literature from a variety of disciplines, including geography, development studies, economics and anthropology, the paper aims to provide an in‐depth analysis of the dual impact of flooding and microcredits in Bangladesh.

Over the last few years the use of preventive mitigation and coping strategies has declined in Bangladesh. The most widely cited reason for this is financial constraints as a result of declining rural incomes despite a large presence of MCOs in the country. In order to overcome cash shortages many people have resorted to borrowing from a variety of sources, which has become effectively the single most important coping strategy employed. In conjunction with lowered debt capacity and restrictive terms under which microcredits are disbursed, higher indebtedness, creating a potential for poverty traps, is the outcome.

For MCOs to be able to claim that their work alleviates poverty they have to demonstrate sensitivity towards the needs of their clients. Yet, the added risks imposed by recurring environmental stressors have been markedly absent from their studies. This paper proposes that the environmental context not only is important but also draws attention to some of the negative consequences that it can have on livelihood sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the role of macroeconomic policy‐mix in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially the goal of poverty reduction.

The paper employs descriptive approach and provides an analytical narrative of historical experience.

It is argued that macroeconomic policy‐mixes pursued by many developing countries as part of conditions to receive support from international financial institutions and the donor community have been largely restrictive. They have failed, in most cases, to generate high enough growth to have significant impacts on poverty reduction. The poverty reducing impact of growth has also been weakened by the rise in inequality due to associated policy reforms promoting market liberalization and deregulation.

The paper argues in favor of using full and productive employment, which is one of the core MDGs, as the goal of macroeconomic policies.

The paper argues that there should be refocusing of macroeconomic policies to align with MDGs.

Households are exposed to a wide array of risks, characterized by a known or unknown probability distribution of events. Disasters are one of these risks at the extreme end. Understanding the nature of these risks is critical to recommending appropriate mitigation measures. A household’s resilience in resisting the negative outcomes of these risky events is indicative of its level of vulnerability. Vulnerability has emerged as the most critical concept in disaster studies, with several attempts at defining, measuring, indexing and modeling it. The paper presents the concept and meanings of risk and vulnerability as they have evolved in different disciplines. Building on these basic concepts, the paper suggests that assets are the key to reducing risk and vulnerability. Households resist and cope with adverse consequences of disasters and other risks through the assets that they can mobilize in face of shocks. Asustainable strategy for disaster reduction must therefore focus on asset‐building. There could be different types of assets, and their selection and application for disaster risk management is necessarily a contextual exercise. The mix of asset‐building strategies could vary from one community to another, depending upon households’ asset profile. The paper addresses the dynamics of assets‐risk interaction, thus focusing on the role of assets in risk management.

The purpose of this paper is to find the determinants of participation and targeting efficiency of the following safety net programs in West Bengal: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), self-targeted program; National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), subsidy based livelihood program; Indira Awaas Yojona (IAY), targeted cash transfer program and Public Distribution System (PDS), targeted in kind transfer program.

The study is based on a household survey comprising 900 households across three Districts: Murshidabad, Nadia and Burdwan.

Benefits from MNREGA and PDS are not substantial, whereas financial benefits are substantial from NRLM and IAY. This paper shows that poor people have higher likelihood of participation in MNREGA and PDS. But, non poor get disproportionate benefits from IAY and NRLM both have been designed for the poor. Therefore, targeting cannot remove elite capture altogether. Socially down trodden section have higher participation in MNREGA and PDS, whereas people who are at upper tier of social hierarchy enjoy the benefits of IAY and NRLM. However, it cannot be said that these programs miss their target completely.

The study suffers from the usual limitations of sampling.

Programs targeted for the poor are being appropriated by the non poor. If there is better targeting money will be channelized to the desired beneficiaries and welfare will be enhanced.

The study has unearthed the underlying reasons behind why some safety net programs have better targeting and some safety net programs have poor targeting.

While recent research has established that businesses can benefit from engaging with people at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), the authors know little about the practices that managers can use to effectively strategize this ethically sound and financially attractive proposition and turn it into new business.

To address this gap, the authors reported on an action research study in which the authors collaborated with a major Mexican agribusiness, ANSA, to expand its market through value co-creation with the country’s poorest farmers. To shape the strategizing, the authors combined dynamic capability theory and options theory, and the authors used the asset hexagon framework to understand the BOP population’s needs.

The authors offer a detailed account of how ANSA’s management team collaborated downstream with distributors and farmers and upstream with suppliers to grow a new micro-franchise business that increases the well-being of the poorest farmers and creates additional business opportunities. The research describes how firms can strategize and implement new business ventures for co-creating value with the BOP population. The results are a process model and related propositions for strategizing value co-creation with BOP.

The authors offer new empirical insights, a grounded process model and model-related propositions on strategizing BOP options. As such, the study contributes to the BOP literature by joining critical ethics with actionable knowledge of how such efforts may unfold and by demonstrating how theory may be enacted and developed in the process.