In Let Their People Come, Lant Pritchett discusses five "irresistible forces" of global labor migration, and the "immovable ideas" that form a political backlash against it. Increasing wage gaps, different demographic futures, "everything but labor" globalization, and the continued employment growth in low skilled, labor intensive industries all contribute to the forces compelling labor to migrate across national borders. Pritchett analyzes the fifth irresistible force of "ghosts and zombies," or the rapid and massive shifts in desired populations of countries, and says that this aspect has been neglected in the discussion of global labor mobility. Let Their People Come provides six policy recommendations for unskilled immigration policy that seek to reconcile the irresistible force of migration with the immovable ideas in rich countries that keep this force in check. In clear, accessible prose, this volume explores ways to regulate migration flows so that they are a benefit to both the global North and global South.

Despite great progress around the world in getting more kids into schools, too many leave without even the most basic skills. In India’s rural Andhra Pradesh, for instance, only about one in twenty children in fifth grade can perform basic arithmetic. The problem is that schooling is not the same as learning. In The Rebirth of Education, Lant Pritchett uses two metaphors from nature to explain why. The first draws on Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom’s book about the difference between centralized and decentralized organizations, The Starfish and the Spider. Schools systems tend be centralized and suffer from the limitations inherent in top-down designs. The second metaphor is the concept of isomorphic mimicry. Pritchett argues that many developing countries superficially imitate systems that were successful in other nations— much as a nonpoisonous snake mimics the look of a poisonous one. Pritchett argues that the solution is to allow functional systems to evolve locally out of an environment pressured for success. Such an ecosystem needs to be open to variety and experimentation, locally operated, and flexibly financed. The only main cost is ceding control; the reward would be the rebirth of education suited for today’s world.

'No matter if I fall, I get up again. If I fall 5,000 times, I will stand up another 5,000 times.' -- William, a 37-year-old from El Gorri n, Colombia Why and how do some people move out of poverty and stay out while others remain trapped? Most books on growth and poverty reduction are dominated by the perspectives of policy makers and academic experts. In contrast, 'Moving Out of Poverty: Success from the Bottom Up' presents the experiences of poor people who have made it out of poverty. The book's findings draw from the Moving Out of Poverty research conducted in communities in 15 countries in Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and South Asia. The authors synthesize the results of qualitative and quantitative research based on discussions with over 60,000 people in rural areas. They offer bottom-up perspectives on the processes and local institutions that play key roles in escapes from poverty. The study finds that there are no differences in the initiatives taken by the poor, the rich, and the upwardly mobile. What, then, explains the difference in outcomes? The authors demonstrate how in the face of deep social inequalities that block access to economic opportunities and local democracies individual initiative and empowerment by themselves are often not enough to escape poverty. This book will be of interest to all concerned with equity in an increasingly unequal world.

The recent growth literature has underestimated the importance - and ignored the implications - of the instability and volatility of growth rates. In particular, the use of panel data to investigate the effects of long-term growth in developing countries - especially with fixed effects estimates - is potentially more problematic than helpful.Except during the Great Depression, the historical path for per capita GDP in the United States has been reasonably stable exponential trend growth, with modest cyclical deviation. Graphically, growth in the United States displays as a modestly sloping, only slightly bumpy, hill. But almost nothing that is true about per capita GDP for the United States (or for other OECD countries) is true for developing countries.First, per capita GDP in most developing countries does not follow a single time trend: For a given country, there is great instability in growth rates over time, relative to both average level of growth and to cross-sectional variance.These shifts in growth rates lead to distinct patterns. Some countries have had steady growth (hills and steep hills); others have had rapid growth followed by stagnation (plateaus); others have had rapid growth followed by declines (mountains) or even catastrophic declines (cliffs); still others have experienced continuous stagnation (plains) or even steady decline (valleys).Second, volatility - however measured - is much greater in developing than in industrial countries.These stylized observations about growth rates, Pritchett concludes, suggest that it may be useless to use panel data to investigate long-term growth rates in developing countries. Perhaps more can be learned about developing countries by investigating what initiates (or halts) episodes of growth.There is something of a professional split in growth literature, Pritchett observes. Macroeconomists studying industrial countries discuss steady-state growth and ponder whether all countries in the convergence club will reach the same happy level in the end. Development economists, on the other hand, are the pathologists of economics, having discovered that developing countries are most emphatically not all alike. Developing countries have found ways to be ecstatic but they have also discovered many different ways to be unhappy.This paper - a product of the Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the determinants of economic growth.

This book brings together the latest thinking about poverty dynamics from diverse analytic traditions. Leading development practitioners and scholars from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology, critically examine the literature from their disciplines and contribute new frameworks and evidence from their own works.