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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Securing a future for the next generations – navigating today’s global challenges

by Frederik Matthys
In an era frequently described as ‘unprecedented’, the global landscape often seems daunting. Countries classified as democracies are increasingly outnumbered by those classified as autocracies, interstate conflicts have escalated, and the multifaceted impacts of climate change—from health crises to forced displacement—continue to intensify. Meanwhile, gender inequality persists, progress in poverty and inequality reduction has stalled, or even reversed in some contexts, and multilateral co...

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...

What are foresight methods and how can they secure our common futures?

by Aicha Robei
Future tools and foresight thinking are crucial instruments to improve decision-making for a common future. As a Youth Foresight Fellow with UNICEF, I firmly believe that utilizing foresight, a sophisticated approach for anticipation and strategic planning, is essential in tackling and lessening the impacts of climate change, conflict, and inequality.Foresight allows us to think about the speculated future based on models and data to solve problems and chart a path to a prosperous and nurturing...

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    Policy Brief
    Man at a supermarket, with a female clerk, Tanzania. Image: Imani Nsamila / UNU-WIDER
    Keys for sustaining Tanzania’s economic development
    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
    Gender pay gaps on the rise in South Africa

    New analysis of income data in South Africa shows the gender pay gap—how much more men earn than women—has increased. According to findings from a...

    Blog
    High wage inequality in South Africa – are employers to blame?
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    South Africa ranks as the world’s most unequal country by income. This is largely due to high wage inequality, given that wages are the main income...

    Blog
    On the road to fairer societies in Asia and the Pacific region: Four focus areas on center stage

    A recent panel discussion at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in Bangkok set out to identify policy...

    Blog
    The COVID-19 TERS policy saved at least 2 million jobs: But not without some unintended results

    About three years have passed since the South African government introduced the COVID-19 Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) in response...

    Blog
    Stuck at the bottom of the job ladder in Africa: The stumbling block to resilient growth and prosperity
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    When the question of creating good jobs and decent work in Africa arises, policymakers and development partners often focus on formalization. For...

    Blog
    Addressing poverty and unemployment in South Africa’s townships
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    Nearly half the working-age population and nearly two-thirds of the unemployed live in areas designated as townships under apartheid spatial laws...

    Policy Brief
    Climbing the job ladder

    Most workers in developing countries work in the informal labour market Lower-tier informal work leads to a dead end in the countries in this study, with little opportunity to move up the job ladder While those in upper-tier informal work are the...

    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
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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...

    Blog
    In memory of Ela Ramesh Bhatt — The gentle revolutionary
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    Ela Ramesh Bhatt, the founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) of India, passed away on 2 November 2022. Known as the ‘gentle...

    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
    Sales recovered faster from the pandemic than employment: Evidence from tax administrative and survey data in Zambia

    Like most other countries, the government of Zambia introduced restrictions to control COVID-19, which considerably curtailed normal economic activity...

    Blog
    Indonesia, the developer’s dilemma, and Vision 2045

    According to the World Bank, Indonesia has reached the upper-middle income status in 2019 after spending almost two decades in the lower-middle income...

    Blog
    Corona pandemic revealed gaps in African social security systems
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    Millions of Africans lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but state social security systems were of little help to people who lost...

    Policy Brief
    O papel das políticas de impostos e benefícios durante a pandemia da COVID-19 em 2020 em Moçambique
    Policy Brief
    Limited impact of the tax-benefit system in Tanzania during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020
    Blog
    COVID-19 and the Global South — From crisis response to sustainable development
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    Around the world, the pandemic, and the measures taken to address it, have had far reaching effects on poverty, inequality, and governance. And even...

    Policy Brief
    Distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda
    Policy Brief
    Distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana
    Policy Brief
    The role of tax-benefit policies during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in Mozambique
    Blog
    Working together to better understand how COVID-19 affects poverty and inequality

    In summer 2020 the SOUTHMOD team set out, with partners, to analyse the impact of government policies on protecting households from getting poorer and...

    Policy Brief
    Distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Zambia
    Blog
    Wasted talent – How COVID-19’s effect on the poor could make all of society poorer
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    The opening keynote of the recent WIDER Development Conference, COVID-19 and development – effects and new realities for the Global South, was given...

    Blog
    Helping the poor to survive lockdown

    The Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project has been tracking the daily spending of 60 poor households in rural Bangladesh for the last six years. Analysis...

    Blog
    India’s manufacturing and services value-chains are shifting South: A curse or a blessing?
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    Much has been written on India as an outlier in Global Value Chains (GVC). Despite being one of the largest and fastest-growing markets located in...

    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
    Long-term research in Tanzania sheds light on the reasons rural households diversify their income
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    Researchers and policymakers have long asked whether rural households in Africa diversify their income to spread risk or by seizing opportunities to...

    Blog
    Ethnic diversity and informal employment in Ghana

    Informal activities are widespread in many developing countries. In many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries informal economic activities account for...

    Blog
    Precarious employment for youth in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia

    Youth (those aged 15–29) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) face notoriously precarious employment prospects. Youth unemployment is the...

    Blog
    Over 2 billion workers globally are informal — what should we do about it?
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    Informality is a pervasive phenomenon in the labour markets of developing countries. Two billion workers, representing 61.2 per cent of the world’s...

    Blog
    Better measures of informality can improve poverty reduction policy
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    In a recent study, my co-authors and I propose a new way to measure informality by household, rather than by individual worker. We find that such an...

    Policy Brief
    Better livelihoods through income diversification in Tanzania
    Blog
    Ghana's lockdown hit vulnerable workers hard: What needs to happen next time

    Coronavirus lockdowns brought the world to a standstill. Rules on hygiene and social distancing have reshaped daily life, schools and businesses had...

    Policy Brief
    Firm performance, trade linkages, and the growth of SMEs in Tanzania
    Research Brief
    Simplifying the tax filing of small businesses in Uganda
    Blog
    Sub-Saharan Africa had a manufacturing renaissance in 2010s – it’s a promising sign for the years ahead

    The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy, with world output contracting at 3.5% in 2020, and no recovery likely before the fourth...

    Research Brief
    Job duration in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa

    The two primary features of a job are its wage and how long it lasts. Today, there is an extensive literature on wages in the developing world thanks to the expansion of national household survey data. However, far less work has been conducted on job...

    Research Brief
    Special economic zones in Zambia and South Africa

    East Asia’s successful experience in accelerating the process of industrial development with SEZs paved way for the use of SEZs as policy instruments in Africa. In southern Africa, Zambia and South Africa instituted SEZs in legal and institutional...

    Blog
    Studying COVID-19 through the lens of microsimulation: The role of tax and benefit policies in alleviating poverty and inequality

    As the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, developing nations are struggling to deliver economic assistance and public services to their...

    Research Brief
    Economic transformation in Vietnam
    Research Brief
    Wage inequality in post-apartheid South Africa

    Much work has been done on inequality in South Africa, but to date the literature that assesses the dynamic response of income or wealth distribution to economic policy actions is almost non-existent. This information gap is caused by data...

    Research Brief
    Finding optimal solutions for efficient youth labour policies

    According to South Africa’s National Development Plan Vision 2030, serious action needs to be taken to reduce poverty and encourage economic growth. One of the main challenges involves reducing the unemployment rates in South Africa, particularly...

    Blog
    Barriers to opportunity for students in Mozambique: In their own words
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    Across Mozambique, 1,600 secondary school graduates from technical and vocational (TVET) institutes are being tracked as part of the school-to-work...

    Blog
    Graduating in the shadow of the pandemic: The impact of COVID-19 on the transition of young Mozambicans from school to work

    Since appearing in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has plunged the world into an unprecedented health and socioeconomic crisis. In response, during the...

    Blog
    COVID-19 intensifies global need to support informal workers in their struggle: Three guiding principles for a better deal
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    The world is facing an existential crisis that poses challenging questions: whether to put people and nature before owners of capital and technology...

    Displaying 48 of 135 results