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Publications (16)
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.
– High poverty and low trust
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, sub-Saharan African countries faced the dilemma of how to minimize viral transmission without adversely affecting the poor. This study proposes an index of lockdown readiness, taking into account housing conditions and income security, and analyses how this...
Continued lockdown measures are straining the social contract between citizens and governments. As this column explains, in contexts where there are low levels of trust in the state as well as high economic inequality – including some countries in sub-Saharan Africa – this could lead to growing...
Working Paper
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– High poverty and low trust
The primary policy response to suppress the spread of COVID-19 in high-income countries has been to lock down large sections of the population. However, there is growing unease that blindly replicating these policies might inflict irreparable damage to poor households and foment social unrest in...
Working Paper
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– Cash transfers and political attitudes in Pakistan
This paper studies how household-level receipts of cash transfers affect political attitudes in Pakistan. The paper exploits the locally exogenous eligibility cut-off of the flagship Benazir Income Support Programme to estimate causal effects. The main results show evidence of improved satisfaction...
Book Chapter
– Xenophobia in post-Apartheid South Africa
In May 2008, South Africa became the theatre of widespread violent attacks against undesirable ‘outsiders’. Over 60 were killed, hundreds wounded, and tens of thousands displaced. This analysis aims at identifying the characteristics of the victims in an attempt to portray the ‘alien’ using...
Working Paper
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– Xenophobia in Post-Apartheid South Africa
In May 2008, South Africa became the theatre of widespread violent attacks against undesirable ‘outsiders’. Over 60 were killed, hundreds wounded, and tens of thousands displaced. This analysis aims at identifying the characteristics of the victims in an attempt to portray the ‘alien’ using...
Working Paper
pdf
– Growth and Distributional Aspects
The United Nations Millennium Declaration commits to halving extreme poverty between 2000 and 2015. The South African government has set a goal of halving poverty by 2014, although the meaning of this goal has not yet been defined. This article specifies government’s stated target of halving poverty...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Ghana’s Microfinance Sector
This paper examines the combined effect of interest rates and poverty levels of microfinance clients on loan size. Cross section data on 2,691 clients and non-clients households from Ghana is used to test the hypothesis of loan price inelasticity. Quantile regression and variants of least squares...
Working Paper
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– Whither Africa
The global economic crisis beginning in 2008 has come at a very inopportune time for Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) appeared to be on a march toward real economic and human progress, following the dismal performance of the 1980s and early 1990s. Economic growth had resurged since the mid-1990s...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Rural and Urban African Economies
The present study examines the degree to which income distribution affects the ability of economic growth to reduce poverty, based on 1990s data for a sample of rural and urban sectors of African economies. Using the basic needs approach, an analysis-of-covariance model is derived and estimated...
Working Paper
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– Comparative Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa
This study explores the extent to which inequality affects the impact of income growth on the rates of poverty changes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) comparatively with non-SSA, based on a global sample of 1977–2004 unbalanced panel data. For both regions and all three measures of poverty—headcount...
Working Paper
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– A Case of a Humanitarian Emergency
The recent history of Zaire presents a unique opportunity to understand and explain humanitarian emergencies. This monograph follows an inductive approach in analysing the trajectory of state-building in Zaire as a significant explanatory variable of humanitarian emergencies. By tracing the sources...
Working Paper
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The Age of Humanitarian Emergencies makes an effort to define and operationalize a humanitarian emergency. After having discussed extensively definitions related to collective violence, especially genocide and civil war, the paper opts for a more comprehensive definition associated with the idea of...
Working Paper
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– Reflections from the Case of Rwanda
Rwanda's genocide is the end-result of a combination of processes, none of which can easily be priorized or separated from the others. These processes are: extreme pauperization and reduction of life chances for a majority of the poor, especially from 1985 onwards; the Front Patriotique Rwandais...
Working Paper
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– Réflections á partir du cas du Rwanda
Le génocide rwandais est le résultat final d'une combinaison de mécanismes dont aucun ne peut revendiquer être prioritaire ou indépendant des autres. Parmi ces mécanismes figurent une extrême pauvreté et la réduction des perspectives d'avenir pour la majorité de la population, tout particulièrement...
Displaying 16 of 16 results