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From the Editor's desk (October 2011)Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...
Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...
Luc Christiaensen and Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen If a person suddenly becomes poor, for example, due to an unexpected death or illness in the family...
This paper investigates how two effects drive wedges between nominal and real inequality estimates. The effects are caused by (i) differences in the composition of consumption over the income distribution coupled with differential inflation of...
The poor can and do save, but often use formal or informal instruments that have high risk, high cost, and limited functionality. This could lead to undersaving compared to a world without market or behavioural frictions. Undersaving can have...
The paper proposes an analysis of the recent distributional dynamics in Uganda. This analysis is performed by endorsing an opportunity egalitarian perspective, in order to evaluate the outcome dynamics of specific groups of the population and infer...
This paper undertakes an assessment of the evolution of inequality in the distribution of consumption expenditure in India over the last quarter-century, from 1983 to 2009-10, employing data available in the quinquennial ‘thick’ surveys of the...
This paper aims to assess the impact that the impoverishment process has had on IPD health dynamics and micronutrient-related morbidity via the changes which have occurred in food consumption in terms of average intake, its distribution and the...
For developing and transitional countries we explore trends in rural-urban, intrarural and intraurban inequality of income, poverty risk, health and education. In particular, we ask whether behind generally rising inequality post-1980 lie offsetting...
This paper re-examines the current debate on price scissors based on an extended framework, in which the production and trade of industrial consumer goods within the rural sector is incorporated. It confirms that in the economy considered by...
At our 30th Anniversary Conference we took the chance to interview Martin Ravallion of Georgetown University—we asked him to discuss his recent work...
The extant literature on status-signalling primarily adopts Veblen’s theory of class to caste and racial identities. This study aims to adopt a more suitable theoretical lens that is more relevant not only for class identities, but also for other...
After decades of war, ending in 1992, Mozambique embarked on a path of sustained economic growth and substantial poverty reduction. However, these positive dynamics started to revert from 2015, with per capita growth rates getting close to zero and...
This paper investigates the expenditure patterns of South African households using detailed cross-sectional expenditure and price data. Linear expenditure system (LES) parameter estimates are used to calculate income and price elasticities for a...
This paper employs a cointegrated vector autoregressive model to assess the growth effect of aid in Uganda over the period 1972-2008. Results show that aid in Uganda has had both direct and indirect beneficial association with growth; that it is the...