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Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Executive summary -- 1. Progress in social development -- 2. The critical role of government -- 3. The economic fundamentals: the importance of markets -- 4. Policy reforms. the poor, and safety nets -- 5. Labor market policies -- 6. Developing human capital -- 7. The World Bank and Social Development -- Selected bibliography. -- Boxes -- Figures.

The development experience of the past forty years has been an astonishing success: life expectancy and education levels have increased dramatically, and average per capita incomes in the developing world have doubled. Still, much remains to be done. Over one billion people worldwide struggle to survive on less than one dollar a day, too many infants and children still die from malnutrition and preventable diseases, and large numbers of people are unemployed or locked into low-productivity work. Compounding the problems of poverty and unemployment is the threat of social disintegration, manifested in the crime, violence, conflict, and the war that have cost millions of lives. In response to these global problems, the United Nations called a World Summit for Social Development to address three related challenges: poverty reduction, employment generation, and social integration. The Summit will bring together heads of state, researchers, and representatives of international agencies and nongovernmental organizations to lay the foundation for people-oriented economic and social progress. To aid the deliberation, the Bank has prepared this paper, focusing on some crucial issues of economic and social development on the Bank ' s support for country efforts to address these issues. The judgements in the paper do not reflect the views of the Board of Directors of the Bank or the governments they represent.