Filter by...
Reset all
Publications (31)
Blog
Data is the key to informed decision-making in today's rapidly changing world. As nations strive to address complex economic challenges, data-driven insights have become indispensable. South Africa is no exception, facing issues like declining GDP per capita, sluggish productivity growth, and rising...
– 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...
In Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda, and elsewhere, UNU-WIDER is on the ground to support national development plans, collect and create data for economic analysis and national and international policy processes, and build the capacity of government officials to develop national economies...
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...
Blog
For several decades, UNU-WIDER has actively worked on pathfinding and groundbreaking research on inequalities. We host one of the most extensive collections of income inequality statistics in the world freely available and updated annually. I have written previously about how the institute was...
Working Paper
pdf
– From ad hoc to durable solutions?
This study provides a first attempt to contribute a large-scale assessment of whether crisis response as observed during the COVID-19 pandemic can serve as a feasible blueprint for creating durable solutions across countries. Adopting a lens on fiscal contracts, it assesses high-level parameters of...
Working Paper
pdf
Economic, social, and political inequalities are at the forefront of today’s public debate. While governments around the world have made conscious efforts to promote social inclusion, and major progress in fulfilling basic needs has been witnessed during the last decades, certain groups of people...
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...
Blog
– Does moderate outlast rapid growth in domestic revenue?
The past four decades have seen marked improvements in the collection of domestic revenue (tax and non-tax revenues) in many countries of the Global South. Domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) is a crucial steppingstone for meeting development needs: the costs of achieving the Sustainable Development...
In one of the most unequal countries in the world, South Africa, the poorest 40% have annual incomes of less than US$1,000 (£727) per person. The comparable incomes for the richest 10% are more than US$39,000 per person – nearly 40 times higher than those of the bottom 40%. Those numbers, which are...
Working Paper
pdf
We revisit trends in within-country income inequality using a newly integrated dataset that covers at least 70 per cent of the global population since 1980. We investigate absolute and relative inequality trends across the past four decades, combining the use of Lorenz curves with a set of...
Informality is a pervasive phenomenon in the labour markets of developing countries. Two billion workers, representing 61.2 per cent of the world’s employed population, are in informal employment. Emerging and developing countries account for more than 93 per cent of total global informal employment...
There is a growing need to understand income inequality trends and how they interplay with other social, economic, and political outcomes, both at the country level and worldwide. Despite significant progress during the last decades in improving the availability of data to study inequalities...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– What are the main drivers of income distribution changes in the new millennium?
From the book:
Inequality in the Developing World
Working Paper
pdf
This paper presents preliminary evidence of the annual global income distribution since 1950 using a new integrated dataset that aggregates standardized country income distributions at the percentile level estimated from various sources in the World Income Inequality Database. I analyse the extent...
– And why it matters
More accurate estimates of inequality trends allow us to measure progress towards achieving reductions in inequality within and between countries. Deviations in trend patterns can provide insights for further explorations of the root causes and consequences of varying degrees of economic inequality...
Displaying 16 of 31 results