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

 

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Two poems by Neide Sigaúque

by Neide Sigaúque
On 15 May, poet Neide Sigaúque was commissioned to perform two poems on the themes of the WIDER Development Conference The world at crossroads – securing the future generations held in Maputo, Mozambique.One cannot sleep here, let alone dream I am Neide Sigaúque,A womanfrom the southern side of the Third World,Mozambique, 'land of the good people'.I was born in an independent country —independently of my parents' liberation struggle,today dependent on external aid.A country with an economy...

Counting (on) the labour market to secure a just transition

by Haroon Bhorat, François Steenkamp
The climate stabilization imperative emerging from the Paris Agreement is, in so many ways, absolutely critical to securing the planet’s future for all. The Agreement necessitates a transition away from fossil fuel-based economic production, particularly the use of coal as a source of energy. In 2021, coal constituted 36% of global primary energy supply, while accounting for 40.3% of global CO2 emissions.Whilst the use of coal as a primary energy source varies across countries, South Africa is...

Quantifying the economic impact of conflict traps

by Joan Margalef
As we look towards securing a brighter future for coming generations, we must address the complex challenges that threaten sustainable development and global stability. Among these challenges, conflict stands out as a particularly destructive one. In our latest research, we find that a country that falls into conflict is expected to lose 20% of its GDP per capita after 30 years, compared to if it had always been at peace. Even for small countries, this represents a substantial economic loss...

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    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”...

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    WIDER Alumni Amadou Boly shares wisdom for next generation
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    Amadou Boly is Special Assistant in the Economic Governance and Knowledge Management Complex at the African Development Bank (ADB). Before that, he...

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

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    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...

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    The inheritance of human capital: Rethinking how much parents’ influence children’s human capital in low- and middle-income countries
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    The measure of human capital —the economic value of one’s skills and experience— acknowledges that investments in people’s cognitive and emotional...

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    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...

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

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

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

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    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
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    The debate around intellectual property rights and the COVID-19 vaccine
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    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...

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    Poverty and the pandemic in the Pacific
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    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...

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    Is vocational education the fast track to employment in Mozambique?
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    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...

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    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...

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

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

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    Informing policy for a brighter future in Cameroon: Rose’s Summer School experience
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    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
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    Social mobility in developing countries: Research and policy gaps
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    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...

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    Nobel prize in economics – experiments are no substitute for diagnosis
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    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
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    Indonesia is currently in the throes of an environmental emergency. Thousands of hectares of forest are burning across the vast country, causing toxic...

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    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...

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

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

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    Has the quality of Mozambique’s education been sacrificed at the altar of access?
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    Mozambique, in common with many other developing countries, has achieved impressive increases in access to education. Since 2000, the number of...

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

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    Building the learning agenda: Spotlight on the Global Learning Laboratory for Quality Universal Health Coverage
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    Improving the delivery of quality health services is messy! Vast amounts of knowledge and experience is being generated daily. We need to help capture...

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    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...

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

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    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...

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    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...

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    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...

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    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...

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    Higher education and role models key for supporting further gender equality
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    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...

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    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...

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    Research after thirty years
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    When UNU-WIDER was founded, and I was privileged to be associated with the research being undertaken by the new institute—the main challenges of...

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    Beyond the Crisis of the African University - Why Institutions Matter
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    I recently returned from a week at the University of Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa, speaking at a conference honouring Nobel laureate Desmond...

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    Inequality in Latin America and the Importance of Data - An Interview with Nora Lustig
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    In this interview Professor Nora Lustig, Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics at Tulane University, talks about the importance of...

    Research Brief
    Children’s nutrition status in Mozambique

    Evidence obtained from detailed household surveys in Mozambique during the 2008-09 food price shock reveals just how pronounced the impact of food price inflation can be on children’s overall nutrition status. Moderate and severe underweight...

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    Inequality in South Africa - An Interview with Murray Leibbrandt
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    At the UNU-WIDER Inequality conference September 2014 we interviewed Murray Leibbrandt, Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town on...

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    Why Ending Malnutrition is a Quintessential 21st Century Development Goal
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    In the run up to the announcement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) in September every development issue is clamouring for attention. The...

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    Out of the Poverty Trap Through Higher Aspirations?
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    Why does a mother from a poor African village not send her daughter to school, but instead marries her off to an old man as a second or third wife...

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    UNU-WIDER Inequality Conference 2014: Country Comparisons and Conceptual Approaches
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    18 December 2014 Roger Williamson In an earlier article I reviewed a number of the high-profile contributions to the September 2014 conference on...

    Research Brief
    The Causes of the Decline in Income Inequality in Latin America

    Left-of-centre governments emphasized fiscally-prudent but more equitable macroeconomic, tax, social expenditure and labour policies A drop in the premium paid to skilled workers following a rapid expansion of secondary education decreased wage...

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    Financial Reforms and Falling Inequality in Latin America, 2002-2012: Are They Connected?
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    29 October 2014 Giovanni Andrea Cornia ​For the last quarter of the twentieth century, Latin America suffered from low growth, rising inequality, and...

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    Global Inequality – What’s Going On?
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    26 September 2014 Roger Williamson Huge interest in the WIDER Inequality Conference (5-6 September) Inequality is big news. Whether you think Thomas...

    Research Brief
    What Matters for Learning in East Africa?

    In addition to large class sizes, peer effects, such as overage-for-grade and late-starting pupils, are challenges for the successful development of education sectors in East Africa; there is a comparative lack of research on the impact of peer...

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    Multidimensional Poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo
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    25 June 2014 Malokele Nanivazo After a long series of conflicts and apparent macroeconomic mismanagement, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) seems...

    Research Brief
    Every Drop Counts – Improving Aid to Water and Sanitation

    Each dollar of aid per year provides 0.17 people with access to water or sanitation. This amounts to a cost of US$5.88 per person. Due to economies of scale, countries with large populations benefit more from aid to the water and sanitation sectors...

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    Dear Nicholas Kristof, We Are Here, Too!
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    21 February 2014 Rachel M. Gisselquist Earlier this month, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof published a scathing critique of the role of...

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    Open Access and UNU-WIDER
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    21 February 2014 Tony Addison Development researchers live in a world where research on development, not just in economics but also political science...

    Displaying 64 of 91 results