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Publications (113)
The 1980s are sometimes referred to as the ‘lost decade’ for development. Many countries in the Global South experienced weak or no improvement in poverty indicators. Our projections are equally dire for the current decade and prospects for the SDGs unless action is taken. We project a decade of...
– Differences based on gender
A recent study examines how inequality is perceived among young adults in Mozambique and how perceptions of inequality correlate with different demographic characteristics, including gender. It focuses on how young Mozambicans view the disparities between rich and poor people and why. Additionally...
This study reviews what we know about parental investments and children's human capital in low-to-middle-income countries (LMICs). First, it presents definitions and a simple analytical framework. Then discusses determinants of children's human capital in the form of cognitive skills, socioemotional...
What was the impact on earnings of the economic crisis caused by the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ecuador? To what extent did social assistance programmes compensate household income losses? ECUAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ecuador, helps to assess the distributional...
– A snapshot of Mozambique in 2015–2018
After decades of war and conflict, Mozambique and its economy experienced a strong recovery from the 1990s into the 2000s. However, between 2015 and 2018 multiple crises unfolded in Mozambique — the economic crisis and the scandal of hidden debt, severe weather shocks, and increasing violence in the...
– Example from Malawi
Social assistance programmes have proliferated across Africa alongside redemocratization — the return of multi-party systems with regular, competitive elections. Competitive elections in Africa can provide an incentive to welfare policy reform because they push presidential candidates and political...
– Experience over the last fifty years
Asia has achieved remarkable economic growth and seen hundreds of millions of citizens rise out of poverty since the mid-1960s. Constructing and analysing the factors behind continent’s poverty and inequality over the last fifty years helps gain important insights for further reducing global poverty...
One common characteristic of the fast-growing countries with good labour market outcomes — Korea, China, Vietnam — was at the beginning of their growth spurt their initially equal household income level, which was the result of renewed distribution of income. The most salient examples of more equal...
The notion that social protection should be a key strategy for reducing poverty in developing countries has now been mainstreamed within international development policy and practice. Promoted as an integral dimension of the post-Washington Consensus all major international development agencies and...
– Poverty and inequality in Ghana
Ghana has recently implemented a policy to support public secondary education. A microsimulation analysis helps reveal the impacts of the reform on poverty and inequality and identifies options to finance it without burdening poor households. A recent policy implemented to support public secondary...
– Socioeconomic class and poverty in South Africa
South Africa is often cited as the most unequal economy in the world. Its experience of having to overcome both colonialism and apartheid makes it unique from the vantage of studies on socioeconomic class, economic mobility, and poverty — with household characteristics like race, gender, and...
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Building knowledge about migration governance and policy in the Global South is a priority for research and policy. The studies in this special section offer both new empirical insights and new frameworks for analysis, with key policy implications, that can enrich our discussion of these topics...
– Some lessons from Africa
This special issue comprises six papers analysing different dimensions of inequalities in African countries. Three papers deal with the trend in inequality in consumption in Mozambique, with multidimensional poverty in four sub‐Saharan countries, and with the relationship between living conditions...
The questions of whether aid has impact and is effective have been the subject of a considerable literature, including attention to the aggregate impact of aid on growth across countries (Arndt, Jones, & Tarp, 2010, 2015, 2016; Burnside & Dollar, 2000; Easterly, 2003; Hansen & Tarp, 2001; Jones &...
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 study existing...
– Are non-farm jobs the driver or a brake?
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 the mid...
Displaying 16 of 113 results