Employment and Shared Growth: Rethinking the Role of Labor Mobility for Development

There is one asset that poor people have in abundance: labour. Thus, what distinguishes the poor from the non-poor in low income countries is their ability to sell labour at a good price. Enhancing the poor's access to employment is increasingly recognised as key to development. But while the creation of "good" jobs for the poor has become a policy priority for many developing countries, the mechanisms by which employment stimulates growth and reduces poverty have, until now, not been well understood. This book aims to help fill that gap. Focusing on labour market mobility as a central mechanism for both growth and poverty reduction, it brings together contributions originally presented at a conference organised by the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Development Effectiveness department in June 2006. Using examples from all continents, these papers discuss why multi-segmented labour markets offer a good starting point for analysis, what role the informal sector plays in employment, whether self-employment is an engine of growth, how worker mobility affects income, and how firm dynamics affect both growth and employment through job creation and destruction.