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Annual Report 2022 Cover

UNU-WIDER 2022 Annual Report is released

2022 was a key year in the UNU-WIDER 2019–2023 work programme, with great achievements made possible through our partnerships and collaborations Read more in the 2022 Annual Report.
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Josue Figueroa / Unsplash

The Job Ladder: Transforming informal work and livelihoods in developing countries

NEW BOOK - Available now on Open Access. Providing a nuanced view of informality across a range of developing economies using a common conceptual framework.
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Banner-LDC5-expo

UNU-WIDER's LDC5 Conference Exhibition

Visit the virtual booth featuring materials shared at the 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in Doha, Qatar. Check out photos, videos, and infographics on our research results from LDCs.
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Banner puzzle

Check out our new series of short videos on ‘The puzzle of peace’!

Learn about key issues in peace and conflict research in two minutes from top experts in the field. Click here to watch.
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UNU-WIDER Winter School cohort

Capacity development in action: UNU-WIDER Winter School

In collaboration with Stellenbosch University, we organised an intensive winter school course on tax policy research, delivering training to 27 African researchers from 13 countries. Read more
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In brief

Check out our research in brief

Our research and policy briefs provide a short overview with key findings, lessons, and policy implications, from some of our key research outputs.
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Photo: Alexander Zach / UNU-WIDER

Visit our YouTube channel

Want to catch up on our recent events? Find out what Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz think about the SDGs? Click here to visit us on YouTube.

16 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...

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  • Blog
  • Event
  • Project
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  • (-) Affirmative action
Journal Article
Can Business Rights Alleviate Group-Based Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Part of Journal Special Issue Legal Empowerment and Group-Based Inequality

  • Group-based inequality
  • Minorities
  • Business
Project
Discrimination and affirmative action - what have we learnt so far?

Theme: Inclusion

  • Discrimination
  • Class
  • Inequality
Working Paper
The effect of class assignment on academic performance and the labour market

Can students’ rank in the ability distribution of their class impact their academic achievement? We aim to answer this question using a discontinuity generated by a rule for the distribution of students between classes at a prestigious Brazilian...

  • Affirmative action
  • Brazil
  • Education
Working Paper
Affirmative action: meaning, intentions, and impacts in the big picture

This paper provides a broad overview of the meaning of affirmative action and its intended and unintended impacts. The paper is a literature review and does not make any arguments specifically for or against affirmative action but describes the broad...

  • Affirmative action
  • Horizontal inequality
  • Literature survey
Working Paper
The legal basis for affirmative action in India

The affirmative action policy in India came into practice because of the generations of struggle undergone by the untouchable castes and other backward classes, who were historically excluded from education and administration. As society changed, it...

  • Affirmative action
  • Reservation
  • India
Working Paper
The politics of affirmative action: ethnicity, equity, and state-business relations in Malaysia

Malaysia provides for interesting paradoxes. Poverty was reduced by adopting a horizontal perspective to policy planning through affirmative action targeting one ethnic group lagging economically in society. However, outcomes of affirmative action...

  • Politics
  • Enterprises
  • Affirmative action
Working Paper
Business rights and ethnic exclusion in sub-Saharan Africa

The business rights pillar of the Legal Empowerment of the Poor agenda is not preoccupied with equality of outcome; it concentrates instead on equality of opportunity. This paper addresses the lacuna in the business rights literature by ‘bringing...

  • Legal empowerment
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Affirmative action
Working Paper
Affirmative action with no major switching

Affirmative action in higher education may lead to mismatch, a situation where students benefiting from preferential admission struggle with their college-level work because of poor pre-college academic preparation. In the United States, those...

  • Affirmative action
  • Higher education
  • Brazil
Working Paper
Affirmative action around the world: insights from a new dataset

Affirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach for addressing group-based inequalities along ethnic, religious, and racial lines (e.g. horizontal inequalities). It is adopted...

  • Affirmative action
  • Horizontal inequality
  • Ethnic group
Working Paper
Standardization and ethnocracy in Sri Lanka

Standardization was the scheme that replaced meritocracy in Sri Lanka education, with positive discrimination to increase the majority Sinhalese community’s university enrolment. It did so by minimizing better-qualified minority Tamils’ university...

  • Education
  • Standardization
  • Quotas
Working Paper
Do disadvantaged students benefit from attending classes with more skilled colleagues?

Peers play an essential role in cognitive and non-cognitive skills formation. Ordinal rank may also change incentives and environment, impacting students’ efforts. Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university...

  • Affirmative action
  • Peer effect
  • Ranking effect
Working Paper
Does affirmative action address ethnic inequality?

Despite the good intentions behind affirmative action policies to mediate ‘horizontal inequalities’ between ethnic groups, the evidence on their effectiveness remains open to debate. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of the literature...

  • Affirmative action
  • Systematic review
  • Horizontal inequality
Working Paper
The impact of affirmative action in India and the United States

This paper provides a systematic review of quantitative literature investigating the success of affirmative action policies in addressing socio-economic inequalities between ethnic groups in education and employment. We focus on two of the most...

  • Affirmative action
  • Systematic review
  • Inequalities
Blog
Affirmative action policies and South Africa’s racial wage gap
Placeholder
by James Stewart March 2017

Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by...

  • Affirmative action
  • Discrimination
  • Apartheid
Panel discussion
Addressing group-based inequalities presents at the APSA 2022 annual meeting

On 17 September 2022 UNU-WIDER is organising a panel at the 2022 American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Annual Meeting & Exhibition on the topic of Addressing ethnic inequality: Experiences of reform. The panel, chaired by UNU-WIDER Senior...

6 September 2022
Palais de congrés de Montréal , Montreal, Canada
Past event
Project
Disadvantaged groups and social mobility

Theme: Inclusion

This project has three main objectives in line with UNU-WIDER’s tradition in the area of inclusion and horizontal inequality: (1) to shed further light on the extent to which inequalities run along ethnic, gender, and other communal lines; (2) to...

  • Disadvantaged groups
  • Social mobility
  • Group-based inequality
Displaying 16 of 16 results
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