As Latin Americas population has become more urbanized, so has its poor. Today, about half of the regions poor live in cities. Yet the phenomenon of urban poverty is not one that is well studied or well understood. Consequendy, policy makers across the region are increasingly concerned about how to design programs and policies to tackle poverty. Any advice on the matter, however, should take into consideration the answers to a number of questions:
* Do the determinants of poverty differ across urban and rural areas?
* Is the type of deprivation suffered by the poor in cities different from that which occurs in the countryside?
* Are different instruments needed to help the poor in urban versus rural areas?
The underlying hypothesis of The Urban Poor in Latin America is that, indeed, the causes of poverty, the nature of deprivation, and the policy levers to fight poverty are, to a large extent, site specific. The book, therefore, looks at strategies for helping the urban poor to make the most of opportunities offered by cities while also coping with the negative aspects of an urban environment. The information contained in the book is of particular interest to policy makers, development practitioners, and academics.