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Introduction
Poverty amid plenty is the world's greatest challenge (James D. Wolfensohn, Former World Bank President).
Eradicating poverty is an ethical, social, political and economic imperative of humankind ([25] UN General Assembly, 1996).
Many first-rate globalizers have fifth-rate records on poverty reduction ([30] Watkins, 2002).
Growth and poverty reduction are supposedly the ultimate goals of all development endeavors. International development, financial, and trade organizations, as well as practitioners and academics in this field attest to this assertion. For example, the World Bank holds that its mission is to fight poverty and put it at the center of all the work it undertakes ([34] World Bank, 2001, p. v). On its part, the World Trade Organization ([38] WTO, 2005) contends that its goal is to improve the welfare of the peoples of the member countries, through promoting trade liberalization, the result of which is a more prosperous, peaceful, and accountable economic world.
Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is supposedly a monetary rather than a development institution, has commenced actively working toward poverty reduction in the past few years, through the provision of financial support via its concessional lending facility, the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), and debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. In most low-income countries, IMF's support is underpinned by Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP), which are prepared by country authorities to describe a comprehensive framework that is being implemented to promote growth and reduce poverty in the country ([9] IMF, 2006).
As is the case in most economic fields of study, there have been varying assessments of the progress made so far on poverty eradication, and of the adequacy of varying approaches advocated by academics and practitioners towards achieving this goal. The literature is ample with studies supporting both differing schools of thought. Yet, there is limited scientific consensus on the causes and the appropriate policies needed to help achieve growth and poverty reduction ([4] Bird, 2004). This paper reviews some of the literature and empirical research on this subject and presents quantitative evidence that growth by itself is not a sufficient condition for poverty alleviation.
The paper will present in the next section a quick overview of the contrasting claims on the progress in poverty reduction....