We thank the Department for International Development (DFID) for funding this research and for providing technical and logistical support during the project. We are grateful to Neil McCulloch from the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex for the providing us with the cleaned household surveys that helped us greatly with the poverty analysis. We thank the participants of seminars and workshops held at IFPRI, the World Bank, and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). In particular we thank Manu Mathri and Christian Rogg (DFID), Derek Byerly, Louise Cord, Lionel Demery and Ignacio Fiestas (World Bank), Robert Kappel (University of Leipzig), Helmut Asche (GTZ), and James Garret, Sherman Robinson and Xinshen Diao (IFPRI). Bingxin Yu, Benjamin Schraven, and Holger Seebens provided valuable research assistance. Finally, the views expressed in this paper are our own and do not necessary reflect those of IFPRI or any of the organizations involved in the project.