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Working Paper
By choice or by force?: Uncovering the nature of informal employment in urban MexicoUsing a special module of the 2015 Mexican Labour Force Survey with information on workers’ preferences for jobs with social security coverage, I estimate that 80 per cent of informal workers in large urban areas would prefer to work in a job t...
informal work Labour market Labour market segmentationProject workshop
Transforming informal work and livelihoods — authors' workshop
Working Paper
Dynamics of off-farm self-employment in West African SahelThis study uses detailed household-level data to analyse off-farm self-employment dynamics in Mali and Niger...
Fragile states Informality Self-employmentWorking Paper
Ethnic diversity and informal work in GhanaWe present the first study that examines the effects of ethnic diversity on informal work...
Ethnic diversity informal work InformalityBlog
Decent work and COVID-19 – it’s time for a just deal for all workers
Seven months into the unprecedented crisis of COVID-19, we already see significant effects on employment and earnings worldwide...
Decent Work Informality COVID-19Blog
COVID-19 intensifies global need to support informal workers in their struggle: Three guiding principles for a better deal
The world is facing an existential crisis that poses challenging questions: whether to put people and nature before owners of capital and technology; whether to protect the rights of the disadvantaged or the interests of the elite...
Decent Work Informality women's workWorking Paper
Transforming informal work and livelihoods in Costa Rica and NicaraguaWe divide workers into six work statuses: formal self-employed, upper-tier informal self-employed, lower-tier informal self-employed, formal wage-employed, upper-tier informal wage-employed, and lower-tier informal wage-employed...
Employment informal work worker mobilityBlog
To die from hunger or the virus: An all too real dilemma for the poor in India (and elsewhere)
On March 24, in a speech to the nation, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, announced a 21-day lockdown. With only four hours’ notice, 1.3 billion people were expected to stay at home and not venture out for three weeks...
informal work Informality COVID-19Working Paper
Informal work in sub-Saharan Africa: Dead end or steppingstone?Despite rapid economic growth in recent decades, informality remains a persistent phenomenon in the labour markets of many low- and middle-income countries...
Informality Labour market dynamics Sub-Saharan AfricaWorking Paper
Will urbanization raise social mobility in the South, replicating the economic history of the West?As developing countries rapidly urbanize, the number of people living in ‘slums’—neighbourhoods lacking property rights and basic services—continues to increase...
Informality Slums Social mobilityWorking Paper
The tax elasticity of formal work in African countriesA key policy problem in most developing countries is the size of the informal sector and its persistence over time...
Developing countries Informality Labour supplyWorking Paper
Financial disincentives to formal work: Evidence from Ecuador and ColombiaThe aim of this paper is to quantify the financial cost that informal workers would incur in the event of entering formality, accounting for potential earnings gains upon entry...
formalization Informal sector InformalityNews
Press release - Professor Kunal Sen starts as the director of UNU-WIDER‘Economic transformation needs to be accompanied by political and social transformations if we are to see drastic increases in human wellbeing’
SDGs Transformation InformalityProject
Transforming informal work and livelihoods
Theme: Transforming economies
Informality Self-employment Poverty