The international development community made a commitment to transformative goals related to social, economic, and environmental justice that requires them to leave no one behind. We argue that the use of transformative and indigenous frameworks for evaluation provide guidance towards achieving those goals. We provide a rationale for inclusion of…

Two recent reports contend that the introduction of school choice can promote economic development in economically distressed urban areas. The first report, published by EdChoice, presents a case study of a charter school that has, according to the report, contributed to the economic development of the city of Santa Ana, California. The second…

The world faces pervasive poverty and inequality. Hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid have been given or loaned to developing countries though bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, at least, ostensibly, in order to do something about these problems. Has such aid helped? Debates around this question have been ongoing for decades,…

This book focuses on the questions of: why do some economically disadvantaged nations develop significantly faster than others, and what roles do their educational systems play? As case illustrations, in the early 1960s Mexico and South Korea were both equally underdeveloped agrarian societies. Since that time, the development strategies pursued…

In this paper we consider why students in poor and rural regions of China are dropping out of school in numbers that may be greater than official statistics admit. With questions about education quality among the most intractable in Education for All initiatives across the developing world, we sketch a portrait of education in a remote mountain…

We study how the employment effects of enterprise zones vary with their location, implementation, and administration, based on evidence from California. We use new establishment-level data and geographic mapping methods, coupled with a survey of enterprise zone administrators. Overall, the evidence indicates that enterprise zones do not increase…

Heir property is land held communally by family members of a landowner who has died intestate. Because this informal arrangement does not fit neatly into the individualist-centered, integrated property rights system of the United States, it is viewed by most as a hindrance to economic development and capitalism. We present an alternative framework…

A request from the Ford Foundation prompted a fourth and final assessment of the demonstration phase of the Rural Community College Initiative (RCCI), established by the Ford Foundation. Between 1994 to 2002, 24 community colleges answered the foundation's charge to improve access to higher education and to expand the economic development of their…

This report is one of a series of papers presented to encourage discussion on the evaluation of important development issues. The recent emphasis within the Agency for International Development (AID) on knowing the impacts of development assistance, particularly the benefit incidence of projects and programs, makes it important to look at the…

Jacobs (2000) and McLean (2000) affirm the need to expand boundaries of HRD to include multiple topics in a variety of contexts. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provide possibilities and limitations for the socio-economic development of women in India. The roles of NGOs in serving the socio-economic needs of women provide a broader,…

This article reports results from a network analysis of international trade from 1965 through 2000. It addresses the impact of changes associated with globalization and the "new international division of labor" (NIDL) on structural inequality in the world economy. To assess this impact, I ask three specific questions. (1) Do patterns of…

The aim of this Working Paper is to broaden the debate on "pro-poor growth". An exclusive focus on the income dimension of poverty has neglected the non-income dimensions. After an examination of prominent views on the linkages between economic growth, inequality, and poverty reduction this paper discusses the proper definition and…

The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 represents recent congressional action designed to improve the housing and living conditions of the nation's poor. Like the 1974 act, the older Federal model cities program (1968-72) was designed to benefit low and moderate income families, provide alternative uses for available funds, and allow…

The relationship between education and socioeconomic development is reviewed, and a case study of school improvement efforts in an East Tennessee school district is presented. The district and surrounding Clinch County have been economically underdeveloped throughout this century; their schools represent structural barriers for human capital and…

This report analyzes changes in the number of distressed counties in Appalachia since 1960, identifies macroeconomic trends associated with distress in Appalachia, and examines socioeconomic factors associated with long-term distress as well as factors that predict whether a county moved out of distress. These data are also compared with similar…