In 2013 the World Bank set itself two
ambitious goals: to end extreme poverty within a generation
and to boost the prosperity of the bottom 40 percent of the
population worldwide. In Latin America, the significance of
both goals cannot be overstated. Indigenous people account
for about 8 percent of the population, but represent 14
percent of the poor and over 17 percent of all Latin
Americans living on less than United States (U.S.) $2.50 a

The purpose of this study was to augment
the Bank's research on land markets and investigate key
land market issues in four case study cities in South and
East Asia. From the study results, the consultants have
attempted to determine whether or not certain policy
instruments can be adopted in the respective cities and in
other regions of the world. Ultimately the study, in tracing
the role of various land development policies in these

Despite its rapid growth in recent
decades, GDP per capita in India remains at a relatively low
level by international standards, and the country continues
to be marked by large subnational disparities in levels of
well-being. These large disparities naturally lead to
interest in India’s spatial landscape of potential for
economic development. Against this backdrop, this paper
presents the results of an analysis of underlying variations

As the world is urbanizing, many cities
are grappling with a population that is growing rapidly,
thereby increasing demand for land and housing. This
pressure on land and housing markets often is exacerbated by
inappropriate or inadequate policies. The result is a supply
of well-located land and housing that falls well short of
demand and the proliferation of poorly serviced informal
settlements, many of which are located far from jobs, city

The Malawi Urbanization Review aims to
provide fresh perspectives on urbanization in Malawi, by
analyzing the current and potential contribution of
urbanization to long-term national development and the
current institutional and financial capacity of local
governments to manage the process. Analyses presented in
this report are particularly timely as Malawi is planning
for the coming half decade through the Malawi Growth and

The first paper of this section
(Durand-Laserve) documents how increasing pressures on urban
land and the 'commodification' of shelter and
settlement has increased 'market evictions' of
families holding intermediate tide to property, although
international declarations and pressures have contributed to
reducing 'forced evictions.' The second paper
(Mooya and Cloete) uses the tools of the New Institutional

Policy makers and regulators have
devoted much effort to reforms aimed at improving financial
stability in response to lessons from the 2007-09 crisis. At
the same time, much effort has also been directed to
promoting greater financial inclusion as an enabler of equal
opportunity. To some extent, these endeavors have been
exerted in silos, neglecting the possibility that financial
inclusion and financial stability could be significantly

Urbanization is transforming the developing world. However, understanding the pace, scale, and form of urbanization has been limited by a lack of consistent data. East Asia’s Changing Urban Landscape aims to address this problem by using satellite imagery and other data to measure urban expansion across the East Asia and Pacific region between 2000 and 2010. Illustrated with maps and charts, it presents trends in urban expansion and population growth in more than 850 urban areas -- by country, urban area, income group, and city size categories.

Mixed evidence on the impact of formal title in much of Africa is often used to question the relevance of dealing with land policy issues in this continent. The authors use data from Uganda to assess the impact of a disaggregated set of rights on investment, productivity, and land values, and to test the hypothesis that individuals' lack of knowledge of the new law reduces their tenure security. Results point toward strong and positive effects of greater tenure security and transferability.

The authors investigate determinants of
individual migration decisions in Vietnam, a country with
increasingly high levels of geographical labor mobility.
Using data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards
Survey (VHLSS) of 2012, the authors find that probability of
migration is strongly associated with individual, household
and community-level characteristics. The probability of
migration is higher for young people and those with

In the last 30 years, China’s record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people’s health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce.

This paper estimates slum residents
willingness to pay for formalized land tenure in Pune,
India. In so doing, it offers evidence that the legal
assurance of slum residents occupancy of their lands could
benefit them. Previous studies have discussed legal and
non-legal factors that substantially influence the tenure
security of residents in informal settlements. However, it
remains unclear to what extent, and how, the assignment of