-IANS   Nearly nine million Indian households, or 45 million individuals, saw their incomes rise above the threshold of $1.25 a day, or Rs.56, in the two decades ended 2010, reflecting the success of microfinance, says a survey. "A dramatic number of families moved out of poverty between 1990 and 2010," said the report, based on a survey of more than 15,000 Indian households, carried out by the India Development Foundation (IDF), a...

-AFP   Asia could be as wealthy as Europe by mid-century, but only if it tackles key challenges from inequality and corruption to climate change, an Asian Development Bank study said Tuesday. On current trends, Asia will make up half the world's economic output by 2050, and another three billion people will have joined the ranks of the affluent, their incomes matching those of Europe today, said the report. But the ADB study...

Finally, there's some good news for the United Progressive Alliance government. Consumption numbers for the past six years show that real incomes have grown much faster under the Congress-led coalition than during the National Democratic Alliance era. What's more, poverty is trending down and rural wages are growing smartly. The 2009-10 survey by the National Statistical Survey Organisation (NSSO) shows real spending by each person in rural India rose 6.3%...

A recent ILO report focusses on the discrimination in employment opportunities and remuneration and wants governments to act. IN recent years, one of the predominant concerns of international organisations, especially those that have a “rights” perspective, has been the impact of the global downturn on various vulnerable sections across the world. Notwithstanding the fact that many countries have signed and ratified conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and are...

More than one billion people will not get the basic sanitation and the clean water promised as such projects shrink sharply as a proportion of global aid budgets. A key development goal to halve the number of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015 will be missed because donor countries have diverted aid money away from unglamorous water projects, according to the World Bank and the charity WaterAid. Aid to...