Countries where these policies have worked.

A successful strategy of poverty reduction must have at its core measures to promote rapid and sustained economic growth. The challenge for policies that allow the poor to participate fully in the opportunities unleashed and so contribute to that growth, this includes policies to make labour markets work better, remove gender inequalities and increase financial inclusion. Asian countries are increasingly tackling this agenda of ´inclusive growth´. India´s most recent development plan has two main objectives: raising economic growth and making growth more inclusive, policy mirrored elsewhere in South Asia and Africa. Research that compares the experiences of a wide range of developing countries finds consistently strong evidence that rapid and sustained growth is is the single most important way to reduce poverty. A typical estimate from these cross-country studies is that a 10 percent increase in a country´s average income will reduce the poverty rate by between 20 and 30 percent.