Unemployment and underemployment are developing into Asia's most important long-term problems. On conservative estimates, the region is home to at least 500 million workers who are either unemployed or underemployed. For this reason, helping people as workers is critical for poverty reduction. A question being widely asked is why countries in the region manage to achieve high growth rates of GDP but the corresponding growth rates of employment are somewhat disappointing. Are supposedly rigid labour markets the reason? This volume argues that while labour market reforms may be necessary in...

The theme of this book is that economic growth is key, but institutions and other national and subnational attributes matter as well. They are critical to explaining differences in social development and poverty reduction across countries and subnational areas that cannot be accounted for by growth alone. The book concludes that a more complete strategy needs to consider various institutional factors at the national and subnational levels to achieve rapid and sustained poverty reduction. Indeed, paying attention to these factors will benefit both growth and poverty reduction.