Contents -- Acronyms and Abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Executive Summary -- Management Comments: Summary -- Chairman's Summary: Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Achieving Poverty-Reducing Growth -- Economic Growth-the Recent Record -- How Quality Growth Delivers Poverty Reduction -- Reduction of Income Poverty in Bank-Assisted Countries -- How Effectively Has World Bank Assistance Contributed to Poverty-Reducing Growth? -- 3 Achieving Meaningful Results at the Sector Level -- How Have the Bank's Projects Performed? -- How Much Impact Do Projects Have on the Sector? -- Essential Elements for Achieving Results -- 4 Strengthening Public Sector Accountability -- Strengthening Accountability with Administrative Reforms -- Fostering Local Control to Improve Accountability -- 5 Conclusions -- Appendixes -- A: Project Performance Results -- B: Sector and Project Outcome Ratings in Country Assistance Evaluations -- C: Project Outcomes and Policy and Institutional Quality -- D: Poverty Data -- E: Governance Indicators for Bank Borrowers with Public Sector Programs -- F: Management Response -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Boxes -- 2.1 China and India Account for a Large Share of the World's Poverty Reduction -- 2.2 Burkina Faso-Focused Country Assistance Strategy with Measurable Milestones Yields Results -- 2.3 Analytical Work on the Constraints to Poverty-Reducing Growth Helped Reshape Bank Assistance to Armenia -- 2.4 Conditional Cash Transfers Help Latin American Families Increase Human Capital Formation -- 3.1 Unrealistic Project Objectives Are Often Grounded in Inadequate Institutional Analysis -- 3.2 Understanding the Results Chain Was Key to Designing Interventions to Improve Girls' School Enrollment in Egypt -- 4.1 Building Coalitions Made for Successful Regulatory Reforms in Senegal.

4.2 Asset Declaration Can Reduce Corruption If It Is Enforced and Disclosed -- 4.3 Using Community Feedback to Enhance Accountability -- 4.4 Local Control of Water Systems Gets Better Results -- Figures -- 2.1 Growth Performance Has Improved, but Sustained Income Growth Remains a Challenge for Many Bank Borrowers -- 2.2 Middle-Income Countries Were More Likely to Experience Strong Growth than Low-Income Countries (1995-2005) -- 2.3 Countries with Higher Growth Have Stronger Economic Management and Better Policies for Social Inclusion and Equity than Slow Growers -- 2.4 Policies and Investments that Enhance Equity Strengthen the Growth Effect on Poverty -- 2.5 Poverty Reduction Remains a Significant Challenge, Even in Countries with Positive Growth Rates -- 2.6 Of 25 Sampled Countries, 11 Witnessed Poverty Reduction Between the Mid-1990s and Early 2000s -- 2.7 Changes in Distribution Reinforced the Poverty-Reducing Effect of Growth in Some Countries, but Dampened It in Others -- 2.8 Poverty Remains More Widespread in Rural than in Urban Areas in Most of the Sampled Countries -- 3.1 Project Outcomes Improved in over Half of All Sectors -- 3.2 Project Outcomes Are Better in Countries with Strong Sector Policies -- 3.3 Successful Projects Alone Do Not Ensure Sector-Level Impact -- 3.4 Setting Unrealistic Targets Leads to Perceptions of Failure, Even When Substantial Results Are Achieved -- 4.1 Government Process Quality Indicators Improved in About Half of 35 Countries with Bank-Supported Public Sector Reform Programs -- 4.2 But Governance Perception Indicators in 35 Bank Borrowers with Public Sector Reform Programs Did Not Change Significantly -- Table -- 2.1 Country Assistance Outcomes and Poverty Changes.