Ascending out of poverty: An analysis of family histories in Kenya
Robert Miller, Mary Mathenge, Kate Bird, Francis Z. Karin, Raphael Gitau and Esther Kaloi Nteza (2011)
Using minimally-structured interviews with several generations of Kenyan families, the paper finds that family-history interviews lead to a more nuanced understanding about the factors that support movement out of poverty and shows that ascent out of poverty is a process rather than something arising due to chains of discrete events.

Evaluating India's national rural employment guarantee scheme: The case of Birbhum District
Subhasish Dey (2010)
A cross-sectional survey of Birbhum district in West Bengal, India builds an assessment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in terms of outreach, efficiency in job provisioning and impact on standard of living.

Escaping poverty in Tanzania: what can we learn from cases of success?
Kate Higgins (2011)
Analysis based on qualitative data set collected in six research sites in Tanzania, shows that while agriculture is a key factor in supporting upward mobility, it is non-farm businesses, the accumulation of physical assets, salaried employment and favourable marriage that are critical in helping people exit poverty.

Examining the MGNREGA: Women's participation and impacts in Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Rajasthan, India
Ratna M. Sudarshan (2010)
Fieldwork carried out to understand the reasons behind the unusually large participation of women workers in the NREGA programme, find that the documented variation in women’s participation and other impacts across various states of India arise from specific context and hence provide valuable cues about the changes required for enhancing the impact of the programme.

Is there surplus labour in rural India?
Foster, Andrew D., and Mark R. Rosenzweig. (2010)
An empirical study of agricultural production in India relates inefficiency to small farm size, finding larger farms to be less credit constrained, better mechanized, less susceptible to income shocks, and requiring less labour per acre cultivated.

Local Economic Development and Migrant Remittances in rural Zimbabwe: Building on sand or solid ground
Gracsious Ncube and Georgina Gomez (2011)
Apart from boosting consumption, remittances have also played a positive role in enhancing productive investment in the Tsholotsho district, Zimbabwe but the resulting enterprises are vulnerable in terms of skills and sustainability.

May government transfers to the poor have modest effects on reducing rural inequality?
Lehman, Christian. (2010)
A randomized control evaluation in Mexico finds no effect of government transfer programs on reducing inequality in rural villages, yet greater household spending by the poorest villagers raises the welfare of all villagers through linkages in financial and commodity markets.

Microeconomic Analysis of Rural Non-farm Activities in the Kyrgyz Republic: What determines participation and returns?
Atamanov, Aziz (2011)
The participation of the working population in non-farm employment in rural areas of Kyrgyz Republic is unambiguously governed by income distribution and differential access to assets and infrastructure.

Nature and characteristics of seasonal labour migration: A case study in Mahabubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh
Vijay Korra (2010)
The examination of the phenomenon of rural migration in a village in Andhra Pradesh, India reveals that out-migration from the village occurred primarily in bid for survival and coping with indebtedness and other vulnerabilities.

Political Economy of Tribal Development: A Case Study of Andhra Pradesh
M. Gopinath Reddy and K. Anil Kumar (2010)
Scrutiny of the various policies of the state during the successive plan periods, including the new act - Forest Right Act, 2006, show that there is a need to address issues like traditional rights and livelihood patterns of the forest-dependent tribals in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India to bring about greater livelihood security of the tribal communities and ensure their inclusion into the mainstream.

Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya
Pascaline Dupas and Jonathan Robinson (2009)
A field experiment in rural Kenya finds that savings accounts substantially increased business investment and daily expenditure among self-employed women, suggesting that there is a demand for formal savings methods in rural areas beyond the informal rotating savings and credit associations and household methods already available.

Tribal Movements and Livelihoods: Recent Developments in Orissa
Sakti Padhi and Nilakantha Panigrahi (2011)
Critical review of major tribal policies and programmes of the state of Orissa shows that the various developmental policies of the state of Orissa have had negative impact on tribal people’s access to and structure of livelihood.

Trade, poverty and the lagging regions of South Asia
Krishna, Pravin, Devashish Mitra, and Asha Sundaram. (2010)
An empirical study of the impact of international trade on poverty alleviation in "leading" versus "lagging" states in India finds trade to be associated with reduced poverty but to a statistically insignificant extent in lagging states and to a greater magnitude in urban rather than rural areas in leading states; geographic remoteness and imperfect price transmission is found to impede poverty reduction in lagging regions.