Working Hard, Working Poor: A Global Journey
Gary S. Fields
Abstract
More than three billion people in the world—half of humankind—live on less than two-and-a-half US dollars per person per day. Excellent books can be found on ending world poverty. These books go into depth on many important aspects of economic development but do not focus on employment and self-employment, work and nonwork. The present volume fills in where these others leave off. For the last several decades, Gary Fields has been teaching, conducting research, and working as a policy advisor on labor market issues. Policy makers, businesspeople, and researchers know a great deal about how the ... More
More than three billion people in the world—half of humankind—live on less than two-and-a-half US dollars per person per day. Excellent books can be found on ending world poverty. These books go into depth on many important aspects of economic development but do not focus on employment and self-employment, work and nonwork. The present volume fills in where these others leave off. For the last several decades, Gary Fields has been teaching, conducting research, and working as a policy advisor on labor market issues. Policy makers, businesspeople, and researchers know a great deal about how the world's poor work and what has improved conditions for them. We know how the poor have managed to invest in improving their own self-employment earning opportunities. We know what it takes for the private sector to want to set up operations in a developing country, thereby creating jobs and paying the taxes that can be used to build roads and schools and fund social programs. We know how poor-country governments can stimulate economic growth and make that growth more inclusive of the poor. And we know how the development banks, the rich-country governments, and other development organizations can help poor-country governments and other organizations do what they do not have the means to do on their own: create more good jobs, improve earnings levels in the poorer jobs, and enhance the skills and productivity of their working people. This book shares those lessons with you.
Keywords:
poverty,
labor market,
work,
self-employment,
create good jobs,
improve earnings levels,
enhance skills and productivity
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199794645 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794645.001.0001 |
