ABSTRACT
Basically, the World Bank’s new multilateral development financing has been designed to avoid the middle range of the U-shaped Kuznets curve. It should raise income levels in a borrowing country without increasing income inequality, by adapting project assistance to a country’s level of economic development, or, ideally, raise income levels so much that an improvement in income equality will result. For operational purposes, the “absolute poor” were distinguished from the “relative poor”. In order to help make the poor more productive, there was an expansion of lending for more experimental, complex, integrated rural projects with social services. The “new style” projects can be seen as an attempt to practice a “trickle-up strategy” in order to help the poor without hurting the rich who generally produce more for their national economy and have higher savings and investment rates.
