Over the past sixty years, the world has had a historic success in reducing poverty. Over 1 billion people have been lifted out of poverty since 1960. China, and more recently India, account for a large part of success. Overall, incidence of absolute poverty has fallen from 52 percent in 1981 to 17 percent in 2011. Most of the poor are now resident in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia.

This welcome development in poverty alleviation, however, brought to the fore a related but equally vexing problem of disparities. While the disparities are the largest in Latin America and Africa, no region is free of this increasing serious economic and social problem; disparities have now become a leading political issue even in the United States, demonstrating that disparities are not automatically eliminated at any level of per capita income.

To tackle the disparities, countries and development institutions are formulating policies and strategies that promote and facilitate inclusive growth that allow all citizens to benefit from economic growth. Commonly, these policies and strategies emphasize universal access to quality basic education, health care, clean drinking water and sanitation, financial services as well as rural infrastructure and agriculture development. Our company has used these concepts and lessons from the global experience in work on disparities and inclusive growth at the regional, national and institutional levels.

Our Team

Meet the principal(s) that lead our Disparities and Inclusive Growth assignments: