2004 World Development Report: Making Services Work for Poor People: 2004 World Development Report

Author: World Bank
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: In many cases, services do not benefit the poor, whether in terms of access to services, service quality, or affordability. However, there are indeed examples where basic services such as water supply, sanitation, healthcare, education, and electricity have helped the poor. The existence of these inspiring examples demonstrates that governments and citizens can do better in providing services. Learning from successful experiences and summarizing lessons from failures, the annual World Development Report: Making Services Work for Poor People proposes that placing the poor at the center of service provision can improve the quality of services for them. How can this be achieved? The approach is to involve the poor in supervising and holding service providers accountable, and to better reflect their preferences in decision-making, while strengthening incentives for service providers to deliver services to the poor. Being free from disease and escaping illiteracy are two important pathways for the poor to escape poverty. To achieve these goals, economic growth and fiscal resources are necessary, but they are not enough. The World Development Report: Making Services Work for Poor People provides an actionable framework that can help services beneficial to human development reach the poor. Under this framework, citizens, governments, and donors can take measures toward the common goal of poverty eradication as outlined in the "Millennium Development Goals," and accelerate this process.