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Books - Public Policy and Poverty Reduction in the Arab Region



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Public Policy and Poverty Reduction in the Arab Region


Volume : 0

No : 0

ISSN : 17

Publisher : Arab Planning Institute - Kuwait

Author (s) : Ali Abdel Gadir Ali andShenggen Fan (Editors)

Published Date : 1/1/2007


Contents :
Poverty in the Arab regiongarners little international attention because poverty rates there are farlower than in other regions like South Asia orSub-Saharan Africa. However, high aggregate wealth hides significant pockets ofhardship. The least-developed countries in the Arab region witnessed largeincreases in the proportion of their populations living below the poverty linein the last decade and some, like Yemen and Sudan, areamong the poorest in the world. As a whole, the region has seen little decreasein absolute poverty measures since the early 1990s. Moreover, it had one of thelowest per capita GDP growth rates in the 1990s and early part of this decade,which translated into slow progress in human development compared to other developingcountries. Many governments in the Arab region have outlined strategic plansand earmarked financial resources for achieving significant poverty-reductiongoals. Governments can use a diverse set of interventions to achieve theseobjectives, including regulations, taxes, and trade, monetary, and spendingpolicies. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the ArabPlanning Institute (API) collaborated on this book, Public Policy and PovertyReduction in the Arab Countries, in an effort to provide policymakers in theregion with empirical analyses of the effects of public policy on povertyreduction in their countries. This book focuses specifically on publicspending, which is a concrete demonstration of societal goals and public policycommitments. Governments can use public spending to achieve both economicgrowth and equity—the two components of poverty reduction—but the idealinvestment strategy to maximize these goals will be country-specific. Thecollaboration between IFPRI and API is an example of best practice inpartnership and networking. During the past decade, IFPRI has conducted anumber of studies examining public spending and its impact on growth andpoverty reduction in many countries and regions. These studies have beenvaluable to developing country policymakers, often pushing them to rethinktheir priorities in allocating public resources. However, the relationshipbetween public investment and poverty in the Arab countries had not beenexamined. Fortunately, API has been studying poverty in the Arab countriessince 2000, aiming to establish the basic facts on the spread, depth, andseverity of poverty in the Arab countries. The Institute also conducts trainingcourses on development management, including issues related to poverty and itscorrelates, for mid-level Arab planners and economic managers and providesconsultancy services to Arab governments. Through these activities, API has aunique advantage in communicating research results to Arab policymakers. Thefruit of this collaboration is the current volume of studies on public policyand poverty in the Arab countries, which includes five country case studies andthree regional background papers. We believe that the results reported in thevolume will be useful to policymakers and researchers in the region, as well asto those in developing countries more broadly. While we recognize that morework remains to be done to understand the impact of public spending on povertyalleviation in the Arab region, we sincerely believe that our collaboration hasestablished a launching pad for future work on the subject. 

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