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Rating: 
Summary: Lucid and thorough!
Review: The author focuses on three concepts: Poverty, economic inequality, and economic mobility. The book discusses different methods of measuring these concepts, and reviews an impressive of empirical evidence. The book is of interest for anyone who cares about these issues and wants a review of the latest work on the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Best for those with a disposition for statistical analysis.
Review: This is a book about wealth and poverty. Gary Fields statistically shows the inequality of poverty, income mobility and economic well being (or the lack thereof) through 'distributional analysis'. He takes various aspects of macro economics and analyzes and draws a conclusion for each aspect. The index and reference sections are excellent. Disappointing is the lack of an appendix. An appendix with information that would collaborate the footnotes alluded to in the text would have been helpful to have at hand (i.e. a footnote like "for profiles of whose these poor countries are see World Bank 1997"). Also, aggravating is Field's comparisons, using statistics of various countries throughout the book, but then moving on without concluding or inferring anything (I.e. Korea spends 10% of its educational budget on higher education while Venezuela spends 43% --- ok, so?). If you are not a student or teacher with a concentration in international economics, or a graduate student in international development, or a practitioner with a international agency, then this book will probably not be valuable to you. However, if you have affinity for statistics, and a strong bent towards international issues like poverty, inequality and distribution of wealth, you will find this book a statistical storehouse. Conditionally recommended
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