WIDERAngle

Expert commentary from our network

About

The WIDERAngle publishes expert commentary and analysis of the latest research in global development. The WIDERAngle supports UNU-WIDER’s missions to undertake research and policy analysis on the most pressing concerns affecting humanity and provides a forum for knowledge sharing, discussion, and debate.

 

To see past newsletters, visit our WIDERAngle archive.

 

Write for the WIDERAngle

We accept submissions that represent sincere efforts to advance knowledge on topics related to the promotion of sustainable and equitable development for all. Although many of our writers are established in their fields, we particularly encourage submissions from early-career researchers, policy professionals, and writers who represent Global South countries and perspectives.

 

For guidelines on WIDERAngle submissions, please refer to our Guidelines for submissions.

 

Send submission queries to editorialteam@wider.unu.edu.

 

EDITORIAL TEAM

Executive Editor: Annett Victorero

Managing Editor: Timothy Shipp

Assistant Editor: Tristan Reid

 

Subscribe to the newsletter

How India’s economy has fared under ten years of Narendra Modi

by Kunal Sen
More than 960 million Indians will head to the polls in the world’s biggest election between April 19 and early June. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is seeking a third term in office. And the polls suggest it will achieve this objective.If one was to go by economic growth figures alone, the Modi government’s performance has been impressive. When Modi came to power in 2014, economic growth was sluggish. A series of high-profile corruption...

Affirmative action in Brazil’s higher education system

by Rodrigo Oliveira, Edson Severnini, Alei Santos
Evidence from Brazil shows how affirmative action students in the higher education system adjust their behaviour to catch up with initially higher-performing privileged students.Affirmative action (AA) policies, aiming to address historical inequalities and promote social justice, have sparked debates across the world. Brazil, in particular, grapples with the challenges and complexities of AA, notably through Law 12,711/2012, which introduced the quota policy mandating all federal universities...

Decoding development – insights from UNU-WIDER's synthesis process and beyond

by Timothy Shipp
loren-joseph-unsplash
At UNU-WIDER, we undertake our work explicitly within the context of an emergent strategy designed to maximize the impact of our research findings. We operate based on a theory of change that outlines how research eventually translates into improved development outcomes for the world’s most vulnerable populations.In 2023, we published the report Towards peace, decent work, and greater equality to guide policy efforts to achieve the United Nations Agenda 2030. This report synthesizes the key...

91 Blogpost

Filter by...

Reset all
UNU-WIDER topic
    Blog
    Affirmative action policies to increase diversity are successful, but controversial, around the world

    In a landmark judgment in June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities. This...

    Blog
    Improving early child development outcomes in low-income settings

    Improving early child development outcomes in low-income settings requires affordable, sustainable, and easily scalable solutions. The “First Steps”...

    Blog
    WIDER Alumni Amadou Boly shares wisdom for next generation
    Placeholder

    Amadou Boly is Special Assistant in the Economic Governance and Knowledge Management Complex at the African Development Bank (ADB). Before that, he...

    Blog
    My journey from research assistant to the World Bank and Yale: How SA-TIED transformed my career
    Placeholder

    When I began my role as a research assistant for the SA-TIED programme in January 2020, I didn’t know that it would lead me to such prestigious...

    Blog
    Not too long and not too short: Introducing the new UNU-WIDER and Cambridge University Press series in Development Economics

    Simon Kuznets’ pipe dream was to have economic inequality data that rarely existed when he was writing. What are the pipe dreams of today’s...

    Blog
    The inheritance of human capital: Rethinking how much parents’ influence children’s human capital in low- and middle-income countries
    Placeholder

    The measure of human capital —the economic value of one’s skills and experience— acknowledges that investments in people’s cognitive and emotional...

    Blog
    The 1918-20 influenza pandemic: A retrospective in the time of COVID-19

    The influenza pandemic of 1918 (the Spanish Flu) is by far the greatest humanitarian disaster caused by an infectious disease in modern history. It...

    Blog
    Digital platforms and job search: Experimental evidence from Mozambique

    Digital technologies can be deployed to improve job search, but their effectiveness in practice is disrupted. This column uses experimental data to...

    Blog
    Dual learning disadvantages in East Africa: And how to deal with them
    Placeholder

    Children from poorer families in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda face a double disadvantage in their opportunity to access learning: not only is the...

    Blog
    3 presentations, 9 takeaways on the long-term impact of COVID-19 on learning and how education systems can respond
    Placeholder

    On the third day of the annual UNU-WIDER Conference on 8 September, RISE presented findings from three studies on COVID-19's impact on education...

    Blog
    I was a visiting PhD fellow at UNU-WIDER — this is my experience
    Placeholder

    Virgi Agita Sari joined UNU-WIDER as a visiting PhD fellow in the summer of 2017. Coming from Indonesia, Virgi joined five other fellows from across...

    Research Brief
    Será o Ensino Técnico-Profissional (ETP) uma solução para o desemprego jovem?

    O Ensino Técnico-Profissional (ETP) é frequentemente visto como uma solução milagrosa que resolve questões que vão desde o desemprego juvenil até à mudança estrutural relacionada com o mercado de trabalho. Isto é particularmente verdade para os...

    Research Brief
    Is technical and vocational education and training a solution for youth unemployment?

    Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is often seen as a silver bullet resolving issues ranging from youth unemployment to labour market-related structural change. This is particularly true for developing countries with deficient...

    Blog
    Why countries best placed to handle the pandemic appear to have fared the worst

    During the first year of the pandemic, it was wealthier countries, with their comparatively stronger health systems, civil services, legal systems and...

    Blog
    Changing the lives of very young children: Evidence from Rwanda

    Globally, around 250 million children under the age of five do not meet key development milestones, which reduces their ability to reach their full...

    Research Brief
    Are credits or deductions better in public health spending?

    The impact of medical deductions and medical credits on income inequality is a subject of discussion in South Africa, as well as in many other countries, raising critical questions about the fairness of the medical tax system and the impact on...

    Research Brief
    Analysing the spread of education and healthcare in Asia
    Blog
    The debate around intellectual property rights and the COVID-19 vaccine
    Placeholder

    The most effective way to fight COVID-19 is by vaccinating against infection. But once the vaccine is developed, how can it be distributed across the...

    Blog
    Poverty and the pandemic in the Pacific
    Placeholder

    COVID-19 has had a far greater economic impact than health impact on Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Pacific. There has been extensive commentary about...

    Blog
    Is vocational education the fast track to employment in Mozambique?
    Placeholder

    Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is often put forward as the solution to youth unemployment — but to prove its worth, better...

    Blog
    The five criteria low income countries must have in place for lockdowns to work

    As the COVID-19 virus has spread across the globe, developing countries are starting to enact many of the same policies used in China, Europe, and...

    Blog
    Is Mozambique prepared for a lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic?

    We calculated a lockdown readiness index for Mozambique and the results don’t look good. If lockdown policies are needed to halt the spread of the...

    Blog
    COVID-19 and lockdowns: Are women more affected?
    Placeholder

    Globally, governments are using lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19. This has disproportionately affected the poor, the homeless, and the...

    Blog
    To die from hunger or the virus: An all too real dilemma for the poor in India (and elsewhere)
    Placeholder

    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...

    Blog
    Informing policy for a brighter future in Cameroon: Rose’s Summer School experience
    Placeholder

    In developing countries in general, and Cameroon in particular, young people struggle to get the quality of education needed for upward social...

    Policy Brief
    Transition to labour market by university students

    This brief summarizes the findings and implications of a survey of the school-to-work transition by Mozambican university students. No research of this kind had previously been conducted. Over the course of a year and a half, university graduates...

    Research Brief
    Education reform
    Blog
    Social mobility in developing countries: Research and policy gaps
    Placeholder

    Are the chances of a child growing up in China reaching higher income or occupational levels than their parents any higher than those of a child in...

    Blog
    Nobel prize in economics – experiments are no substitute for diagnosis
    Placeholder

    Sitting in front of a class of 20 young students at a private technical-vocational college on the edge of Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, I...

    Blog
    Indonesia's huge fires and toxic haze will cause health problems for years to come
    Placeholder

    Indonesia is currently in the throes of an environmental emergency. Thousands of hectares of forest are burning across the vast country, causing toxic...

    Blog
    How can developing countries deliver effective public financial planning?

    In many less developed countries, there is little problem identifying the need for public investment in programmes aimed at improving things such as...

    Policy Brief
    Inequality in Brazil

    After three decades of persistently high inequality, Brazil has been experiencing a downward trend since 2001, accompanied by a rise in household incomes. These trends lasted until 2014 when a major reversal took place on both fronts. Since the 1970s...

    Blog
    From PhD Fellow to President: (of Colpensiones, Colombia’s public pension and social security administrator) – Juan Villa
    Placeholder

    Four years ago, in 2014, Juan Villa spent three months at UNU-WIDER in our PhD Fellowship Programme. I spoke to him on a sunny September afternoon...

    Policy Brief
    Employment expectations of university students in Mozambique

    Before now, there has been no systematic study of the transition of university students as they finish their studies and enter the labour market. This Policy Brief summarises the findings of a baseline survey of such university students, who form the...

    Blog
    Young Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in the UK: Does more education mean better futures?
    Placeholder

    Education is my freedom ... if I have my education, everything is still possible for me in the future. Mohammed grinned, and looked down at his newly...

    Policy Brief
    Measuring quality of health-care services
    Blog
    Income generation and malaria in Uganda

    Several large-scale efforts have been made to combat malaria in the last decade under the Millennium Development Goals, and while these have led to a...

    Blog
    Has the quality of Mozambique’s education been sacrificed at the altar of access?
    Placeholder

    Mozambique, in common with many other developing countries, has achieved impressive increases in access to education. Since 2000, the number of...

    Blog
    Quality of routine labor and delivery care in Uttar Pradesh, India: Are private facilities better?
    Placeholder

    In India, the percentage of women who delivered in a health facility increased from roughly 35% in 2000 to 79% in 2014. Despite this progress, given...

    Blog
    Building the learning agenda: Spotlight on the Global Learning Laboratory for Quality Universal Health Coverage
    Placeholder

    Improving the delivery of quality health services is messy! Vast amounts of knowledge and experience is being generated daily. We need to help capture...

    Blog
    Measuring outpatient safety at scale: infection prevention and control practices in Kenya

    Primum non nocere — first, do no harm. This most basic tenet of medical care is routinely violated in clinics and hospitals around the world today...

    Blog
    Missing school years for girls: The case of the Assam insurgency
    Placeholder

    Girls in India face many challenges. From the moment they are conceived, they are less likely to be born as compared to boys. This presence of...

    Blog
    Does women’s education reduce rates of death in childbirth?

    Every single day, approximately 830 women die from causes related to childbirth. Despite considerable advances in maternal health over the last three...

    Blog
    How electoral cycles affect school systems – evidence from India

    Public sector schools operate within the broader context of political systems and the management of school systems can be influenced by political...

    Blog
    Ending child marriage and closing the education gap

    Women in most parts of the developing world are under-represented in the workplace and poorly paid. One reason for this is the gender gap in education...

    Blog
    Diversity debit vs. diversity dividend: Challenging the conventional wisdom

    It is widely accepted in recent work in economics and political science that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on the provision of public goods...

    Blog
    Higher education and role models key for supporting further gender equality
    Placeholder

    Gender equality is one of the cross-cutting concerns of the UNU-WIDER work programme 2014-18. In this interview economists Elizabeth Asiedu and Jean...

    Blog
    Three types of interventions that can improve the quality of education in developing countries

    In a recent article in the International Journal of Educational Development we present the results of a systematic review conducted to identify policy...

    Displaying 48 of 91 results