WBI News & Announcements

The story of growth and poverty reduction is much debated in an ever-changing world. The challenge in the 1960s was how to lift low-income countries from a low-growth trap to a reasonably high-growth path. Fifty years later we have many fast-growing emerging economies but also over a hundred countries unable to move away from low-growth and high-poverty traps.

Between 1960 and 2010, 3 major shifts impacted how we think about growth and poverty. These big shifts were from state-directed "commanding heights" to market-driven approaches; from structural issues of deregulation, liberalization and privatization to sectoral sources of growth, particularly agriculture and financial services; and from macroeconomic to microeconomic (and now macro-micro) approaches to growth.

Somewhere along these shifts, there was a recognition that poverty reduction is a goal in itself and does not have to depend on how fast or slow a country is growing. The new wave of globalization that has swept the world during the past 2 decades has aided growth and poverty reduction in the developing world but the ongoing global economic crisis threatens to undo all those gains and much more.

For policy makers, practitioners and students who want to learn more about growth and poverty reduction in development economics today, the World Bank Institute is offering an e-learning course October 1 - 31, 2010, on Policies for Growth. 

To learn more about this course, please see the course agenda (PDF 324KB).

To apply for this e-learning course, please use the application form. 

The application deadline is September 17, 2010. Please note that a nominal fee of $250 will be assessed for accepted participants.