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Publications (27)
The Zambian government wants to reduce poverty by 20% by 2030. To make this happen, the government reformed their national cash transfer programmes. But what was the potential impact? In 2021, our MicroZAMOD team conducted an assessment—recommendations of which have been adopted at the highest level...
– Latest addition to the SOUTHMOD programme
ZANMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Zanzibar, was launched in November 2023. The model will aid local authorities and researchers in understanding how taxation and social protection policies can be improved to reduce poverty and enhance equality.The research and coding work for the...
– 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 to the pandemic and associated lockdown regulations. Given the extent of unemployment in South Africa even prior to the pandemic, the policy’s primary...
– Welcome to the three new Latin American teams
How would progressive income taxation affect income inequality in Bolivia? What are the costs and benefits of implementing a state pension in Colombia? Which social protection policies reduce income poverty in Peru? In addition to the nine pre-existing countries with their own tailored tax-benefit...
– What Zambia is doing right
Over half of Zambia’s population lived below the national poverty line in 2015. In rural areas, where 89% of households are engaged in agriculture, the poverty rate was even higher, at 77% of the population. The government runs several programmes of financial support for farmers. Some provide...
– Meet our tax-benefit microsimulation team in Rwanda!
How can Global South countries improve their tax and social protection systems? One way is to take advantage of tools that help assess the impact of different policies. Rwanda is the latest country to join the SOUTHMOD collaboration, which will enable UNU-WIDER and Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) to...
– The case of Mozambique
Designing and implementing public policies requires caution to guarantee the best use of scarce resources, especially in middle- and lower-income countries. One of the ways to achieve this goal is to simulate the potential tax and benefit impacts of different policies that are under consideration...
Governments in low- and middle-income countries face a trade-off between raising tax revenue to strengthen social protection and creating incentives to enter formal employment. In developed countries so called in-work transfers (i.e., social benefits paid upon condition of being employed) have been...
– Meet our tax-benefit microsimulation team in Viet Nam!
How can Vietnamese policymakers improve their policy choices related to social protection and tax policies? Who are the experts providing evidence on different policy scenarios and their pros and cons to local decision makers? Meet our SOUTHMOD national team working in Hanoi who are leading the...
The first of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to end poverty in all its forms, everywhere. The monumental task — a long-time dream of humanity — is followed by 16 more goals under the 2030 Agenda. Though they are all interlinked, to even contemplate their achievement requires a deep well...
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 their income.This is the conclusion of a study conducted by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, UNU...
Moçambique reportou o seu primeiro caso da COVID-19 em 22 de Março de 2020. As estimativas do PIB sugerem um forte efeito da pandemia, com uma redução de sete dos nove dos sectores de actividade analisados. No entanto, o sector agrícola – um dos mais importantes – registou um aumento de 9%, que pode...
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that African tax and social-benefit systems are currently ill-equipped to protect households from sudden income losses. Meaningful progress will require policymakers to reduce the size of the informal sector and improve the design and financing of social-protection...
– How five African countries fared
The number of people living in poverty around the world is estimated to have increased by half a billion people due to the COVID-19 crisis. The African continent has suffered at least US$100 billion in economic costs in 2020, measured by the reduction in trade revenues and financial flows due to the...
Are there enough tax payers to generate the revenue needed by governments to reduce poverty? How adequate are the social security arrangements that already exist? Anyone who has started to probe these issues will know that the answers to such questions can be hard to pin down. This is why the...
Presumptive tax, a final tax on business income, was introduced in Uganda in 1997. It has been reformed several times since its conception. The latest reform in July 2020 sought to make the presumptive regime more progressive, simpler and fairer to small firms. The revised rates have however raised...
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