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Publications (60)
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
This study examines the trajectory of global income inequality since 1981. Commonly used (relative) definitions indicate a decline in global inequality since the late 1980s. Looking ahead, it has been intuited that the influence of China's economic development — and that of other rapidly growing...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
The study analyses trends in global income distribution since 1950 using a new companion WIID dataset with standardized country income percentiles. It investigate the robustness of these trends with respect to key data choices, as well as the degree to which the inequality trend depends on specific...
Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have become a symbol of national success and a means for global, commercial and geopolitical influence. But how well do they contribute to national development goals? Furthermore, global decarbonization threatens the future of many fossil fuel-financed SWFs. Here, we...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– An exploratory note
This note explores the literature on the determinants of foreign direct investment and domestic savings. With respect to foreign direct investment, it argues that institutional quality is the key driver of the type of investment that is necessary for structural transformation. With respect to...
Working Paper
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– The contribution of the UNU-WIDER World Income Inequality Database initiative
Globally, there are several initiatives being undertaken to ensure the availability of information across countries that can be used to analyse the inequality phenomenon in and among countries. The data are easily accessible for use in comparative research on inequality across regions and countries...
Working Paper
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– ACEIR research and the WIID
Work done by the African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research (ACEIR) has documented the many-faceted nature of inequality in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. Conventionally measured inequality ranges from moderate (in Ghana) to extremely high (in South Africa). Trying to tell one coherent...
Working Paper
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– Ghana case study
Over the years, money-metric measures of inequality such as the Gini coefficient and the Palma Ratio, as frequently used in Ghana, have become useful in providing quantitative measures of welfare distribution that enable a better understanding of the extent and nature of inequality. From these...
Working Paper
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A substantial amount of research has been conducted examining inequality in South Africa using multiple data sources. We provide an overview of this research in this paper. Furthermore, we use nationally representative survey data to estimate income and consumption inequality in South Africa between...
– Why that’s a problem and how to fix it
Less than 10% of the workers in sub-Saharan Africa save for old age, the lowest rate for any region in the world. That implies most of the breadwinners today won’t be able to afford basic items after retirement. A pension plan is meant to commit employers to make regular savings so that employees...
Many countries today experience increasing or persistent income inequality, a major concern for citizens and politicians alike. This concern is justified; as some individuals get richer, most people’s real incomes stagnate. Widening income inequality brings challenges to a nation’s development...
– What can we do about it?
The recently concluded COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh had one important outcome for developing countries: the announcement of a loss and damage fund. This fund will help address climate injustice by helping low-income countries confront climate change disasters. However, while the developed world finally...
Working Paper
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In this paper we explore the links between international migration and income inequality. After presenting a simple model which considers the role of income distribution in individual decisions to migrate, we estimate a set of models on the determinants of yearly bilateral migration from a very...
Working Paper
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– The case of Ghana
One essential condition of economic progress in any society is an ample supply of savings, which depends on the growth of real capital.Economists agree that higher investment rates will lead to higher growth. Thus, domestic savings is considered an important determinant of growth in developing...
Working Paper
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– Insights from wildfires across the globe
Natural disasters cause economic damages and may exacerbate disparities in income distribution among countries across the globe. This paper employs satellite data on real-time active fire locations to evaluate the short-term impact of forest fires on economic inequality around the world. Using quasi...
Book Chapter
– An integrated approach
In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research...
Working Paper
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– A worldwide perspective
This paper investigates the importance of accounting for the profile of inequality in the analysis of institutional trust. Drawing on individual data from 82 countries around the world over the 1981–2021 period, it sheds light on the potential limitations of exploring the impact of the income...
Displaying 16 of 60 results