The Development Centre’s Work on Poverty Reduction and Social Development reveals the cost of lack of coherence in policy making, both in donor and recipient countries, and shows how development strategies can become more inclusive. Issues such as employment and social protection, gender equality and migration merit special attention because of their direct and specific impact on poor people. The aim of this work is to identify institutional and governance arrangements that are most conductive to better co-ordination between policy areas and constituencies.

Employment and Social Protection
The creation of more and better employment, coupled with functioning mechanisms of social security, is a key ingredient to long-term sustainable development. Our work brings fresh evidence to bear on policies concerned with the delicate interplay between labour markets, vulnerability and social protection.

Gender Equality
Gender equality is an essential human right and is crucial for economic growth. Our work highlights the important linkages between gender equality and sustainable development. We also propose a set of innovative measures of gender inequality and invite people to engage in a bottom-up dialogue through our web platform Wikigender.

Migration
Can international migration contribute to economic progress? Our work on migration and development demonstrates the important gains for migrants as well as for sending and receiving countries from increased international labour mobility.

Outputs
This group produces analytical and stock-taking papers on poverty reduction and social development. Together with our partners, we have engaged in undertaking several country case studies, including of Romania, Mexico and China. We also plan various policy dialogue and outreach activities as well as the launch of our flagship report on “Employment and Social Protection” in early 2009.