Publications (6804)

The UNU-WIDER research programme on foreign aid (ReCom) began in 2010, in a period of strong aid scepticism. Dambisa Moyo’s well-known book, Dead Aid (2009), is just one example. The aid sceptics of the twenty-first century maintained that since economists could not find an aggregate...

In order to reduce poverty you must be able to measure it. It sounds so obvious, but in my experience policy makers think that measuring poverty is either a completely ‘objective’ process, like measuring the temperature in the room, or a broadly flexible exercise that can easily be...

Women are undoubtedly doing better today than they were even 40-50 years ago. The gender gap has shrunk in many areas, including educational attainment, health, and employment and wages. Despite these advances, we cannot become complacent as there is still much work to be done. Thankfully,...

With the recent democratic elections, Myanmar has entered a new development phase. To support this process there is amongst others a need for sound economic policies that have an economy-wide perspective. To enable such policies, appropriate analytical methods and the relevant underlying data,...

Social protection systems in Africa are still in their infancy. As countries develop their systems, it is crucial to look at how existing tax-benefit programmes affect poverty and inequality and how countries can learn from each other’s systems.​​ Microsimulation models can be used to...

The increasing proportion of non-agricultural work in rural India has commonly been associated with widening income inequality. However, our simulations from the village of Palanpur in the north suggest that without this diversification inequality might well have increased even more. From...

Much discussion of climate change in the developing world focuses on if, when, and to what extent developing countries should be subject to any global attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Little work has been done on the likely economic impacts resulting from the interplay of climate change...

China has experienced fast economic growth over the last forty years. The number of Chinese billionaires has grown exceptionally fast and their wealth has increased enormously. At the same time, official statistics report decreasing inequality over the most recent decade. However, correcting data...

Income inequality is the result of complex processes with multiple interacting driving forces but understanding those drivers in emerging economies is particularly difficult because of data and analytical challenges. While most middle-income countries produce comprehensive household surveys these...

The many faces of inequality Measuring inequality isn’t as simple as it may seem. We know that since the 1970s global inequality has been falling in relative terms, but absolute inequality has been increasing over the same period. There are also substantial differences in trends across...