the more successful countries however have not been those that followed strategies focusing on overcoming a single major constraint but rather the ones able to effectively find a degree of coherence among different levels of development policy effective enough to usher in the conditions necessary for poverty reduction the main determinants in the more successful cases are discussed below while they do not necessarily constitute a blueprint for guaranteed success in other contexts they do provide lessons on how to tailor development strategies to national requirements in their indepth study of several developing economies besley and cord eds however initial equality may be more important for if growth proceeds from an initial egalitarian distribution then it has a greater poverty reduction effect this has been borne out by countries that have proved successful in reducing poverty despite rising income inequality during periods of growth acceleration with china being the most prominent example along with viet nam