This book explores successful efforts to alleviate poverty, and enquires whether any of the features of these policies or projects can be imported into environments where poverty has not yet declined significantly. Using cross-national data the book demonstrates that there is substantial scope for policies to reduce poverty - some countries have much lower poverty incidence than would be identifies rules that appear to underlie success in programmes to bring credit to the poor, and thereby to help them to escape poverty by building up income-yielding physical capital. Michael Lipton is Research Professor of the Poverty Research Unit at the University of Sussex, and author of many books on poverty and developing countries