Edited by the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), Program for Improving Capacities for Poverty Research (IMCAP) of the University of Colombo, and Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science – Section F (SLAAS), This book contains edited versions of the papers presented at the Third Annual Poverty Symposium. It has increasingly become apparent that a robust and constantly self-reflective tradition of empirical research is necessary for supporting and guiding on-going poverty reduction efforts in the country. Sri Lanka is gradually recovering from nearly two decades of highly destructive civil war and related processes of political instability and social polarization. As such, both the symposium and this publication aim to contribute to the goal of evolving such a collective enterprise among the local research community.