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African Lions - Ghana's job creation successes and obstacles
Over the past two decades, Ghana’s economy experienced an average annual growth rate of 5.8 percent, and became a low-middle income country in 2007...
775 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Blog
Over 2 billion workers globally are informal — what should we do about it?
Informality is a pervasive phenomenon in the labour markets of developing countries. Two billion workers, representing 61.2 per cent of the world’s...
Working Paper
Changes in the Distribution of Wealth in China 1995-2002This paper investigates some major changes in the wealth distribution in China using the data from two national household surveys conducted in 1995 and 2002. The surveys collected rich information on household wealth and its components, enabling a...
Working Paper
Regional Income Inequality in Rural China, 1985-2002This paper depicts the trend of regional inequality in rural China for the period 1985-2002. The total inequality is decomposed into the so-called within- and between-components when China is divided into three regional belts (east, central and west)...
Journal Article
Stabbed in the back?This study provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of castebased electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show...
Working Paper
Housing Privatization and Household Wealth in TransitionAll countries in transition experienced increases in inequality. They have also undertaken massive privatization of key asset housing, often on give-away terms. Are these two phenomena related? Has transfer of ownership rights to residents slowed...
Working Paper
Global InequalityThis paper examines the nature and extent of global and regional income distribution and inequality using the most recent country level data on income distribution drawn from World Bank and UNU-WIDER studies for the period 1993-2000. The methodology...
Blog
Inclusive Growth in Africa
24 September 2013 Roger Williamson Another big weekend for UNU-WIDER. The stage was well set on Thursday 19 September for a consideration of...
Blog
Jobs Drive Development: An interview with Martin Rama
15 January 2013Martin Rama from The World bank discusses the process behind the World Development Report 2013 on jobs, which he directed.He emphasises...
Book Chapter
Conclusions from the cross-country analysisPart of Book Growth, Employment, and Poverty in Latin America
Book Chapter
Within-country analysis of the growth-employment-poverty nexusPart of Book Growth, Employment, and Poverty in Latin America
Book Chapter
Cross-country patterns: economic growth rate and changes in labour market indicatorsPart of Book Growth, Employment, and Poverty in Latin America
Book Chapter
Changing labour market indicators and the rate of economic growth in Latin America during the 2000sPart of Book Growth, Employment, and Poverty in Latin America
Blog
Millennium Development Goals in Turbulent Times: Emerging Challenges for Post-2015 MDGsRolph van der Hoeven and Peter van Bergeijk One of the most important trends that emerged since the launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)...
Blog
Redefining Poverty in China and India: Making Growth more Inclusive, Part 2Tony Addison and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa China and India are making immense strides in development. Growth in both countries has been impressive. But...
Blog
Reflecting Change: The Second Edition of ‘From Poverty to Power’
Duncan Green Updating a book on contemporary events can be unnerving. In the intervening years, events and new thinking combine to expose the...
Book Chapter
Revenue Mobilization for Poverty ReductionPoverty reduction has become the central goal of development policies over the last decade but there is a growing realization that the poorest people rarely benefit from poverty reduction programmes. Microfinance programmes can help poor people...
Research Brief
A colonial legacy?The presence of European colonial powers in Africa has left a long-lasting legacy that has severely impacted their development trajectories. But what are the lingering effects of colonization on economic performance, in particular with regard to...
Working Paper
The Microeconomics of Inequality, Poverty and Market Liberalizing ReformsThis paper illustrates how the use of microeconometric techniques can be used to uncover the micro dynamics behind macro shocks. Using Mexican micro data we find out that—controlling for everything else—between 1994 and 1998 returns to personal...
Working Paper
Poverty Measurement and Theories of BeneficenceThis note points to certain similarities of orientation and outcome between Derek Parfit’s quest for a theory of beneficence and Amartya Sen’s quest for a suitable real-valued representation of poverty. It suggests that both projects, in a certain...
Working Paper
Reckoning Inter-Group Poverty Differentials in the Measurement of Aggregate PovertyIn a heterogeneous population which can be partitioned into well-defined subgroups, it is plausible that the extent of measured aggregate poverty should depend upon the distribution of poverty across the subgroups. A judgment in favour of an equal...
Working Paper
The world’s two new middlesThis paper discusses the emergence of two new middles since the Cold War, namely middle-income countries and people living above absolute poverty but below a security-from poverty-line. The paper sets out what has happened. It is argued that although...
Working Paper
Inequality, Corruption, and Competition in the Presence of Market ImperfectionsWe analyze the relation between inequality, corruption and competition in a developing economy context where markets are imperfect. We consider an economy where different types of households (efficient and inefficient) choose to undertake production...
Working Paper
Distributional Conflict, the State, and Peacebuilding in BurundiThis paper examines the causes of conflict in Burundi and discusses strategies for building peace. The analysis of the complex relationships between distribution and group dynamics reveals that these relationships are reciprocal, implying that...
Working Paper
Income Distribution and Labour Movement in China After WTO MembershipUsing a CGE model, PRCGEM, with an updated 2002 I/O table, this paper explores how earnings will be affected in each of 40 separate industries across 31 regions (or 8 regional blocks) of China for the period 2002–07. Labour movement between regions...
Working Paper
A Decomposition of Poverty Trends Across RegionsThe impact of globalization on global and local inequality is hotly debated in the recent literature. This study considers the separate issue of the impact of globalization on poverty through quantifying explicitly the responsiveness of poverty to...
Working Paper
Does Inequality Lead to Conflict?This paper presents a simple model to show how distributional concerns can engender social conflict. We have a two period model, where the cost of conflict is endogenous in the sense that parties involved have full control over how much conflict they...
Working Paper
Globalization, Poverty, Inequality, and InsecurityThe literature on the economics of happiness in the developed economies finds discrepancies between reported measures of wellbeing and income measures. The ‘Easterlin paradox’, for example, shows that average happiness levels do not increase as...
Working Paper
Globalization, Poverty and InequalityThe paper studies the relation between globalization, inequality and marginalization, within and across nations. It reviews the existing evidence on globalization and global inequality and argues, using a simple theoretical model, that the two are...
Working Paper
Globalization and Regional Income InequalityChina’s recent accession to the WTO is expected to accelerate its integration into the world economy, which aggravates concerns over the impact of globalization on the already rising inter-regional income inequality in China. This paper discusses...
Working Paper
Land Reform and Landholdings in BrazilLand and wealth are closely related in rural Brazil, a country characterized by high levels of inequality in terms of income or landholdings. After presenting a historical retrospective of land concentration and land reform in Brazil, this study...
Working Paper
The Urban-Rural Income Gap and Inequality in ChinaUsing new household survey data for 1995 and 2002, we investigate the size of China’s urban-rural income gap, the gap’s contribution to overall inequality in China, and the factors underlying the gap. Our analysis improves on past estimates by using...
Working Paper
Estimating Income Inequality in China Using Grouped Data and the Generalized Beta DistributionThere are two main types of data sources of income distributions in China: household survey data and grouped data. Household survey data are typically available for isolated years and individual provinces. In comparison, aggregate or grouped data are...
Working Paper
Development in Chile 1990-2005Chile, in the last 15 years, has shown remarkable results in terms of growth, poverty reduction and democratic governance. This paper reviews the structural changes that were behind these positive outcomes, as well as the pending challenges for Chile...
Working Paper
Forces Shaping China's Interprovincial InequalityThis paper explores the forces that shaped China’s interprovincial inequality in the last five decades of communist rule. In so far as the change in interprovincial inequality is the result of differential growth in the provincial GDP per capita and...
Working Paper
Income Inequality in China and its Influencing FactorsWhile the average level of income per capita has increased in China rapidly, income inequality is becoming a more serious problem that may threaten social stability and the sustainability of economic development. This paper examines the existence in...
Working Paper
What Fundamentals Drive World Migration?Governments in the OECD note rising immigration with alarm and grapple with policies aimed at selecting certain migrants and keeping out others. Economists appear to be well armed to advise governments since they are responsible for an impressive...
Working Paper
The Evolution of Personal Wealth in the Former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern EuropeThis study discusses the evolution of personal wealth in transition economies. While data availability is still a problem, the available indirect evidence suggests privatization has resulted in an increase in personal wealth but also in personal...
Working Paper
Challenges for Latin American CitiesCurrent urban interventions, particularly in cities in developing countries like Santiago de Chile, evidence major neglect in understanding the way contemporary living takes place and how it is changing under processes of globalization, global...
Blog
Africa’s Poverty - Is Growth Delivering Enough?
To Stockholm, for Sida’s Development Talks on the theme ‘Africa rising? Poverty and growth in sub-Saharan Africa’. Finn Tarp and Andy McKay spoke...
Working Paper
Income Distribution Changes and their Impact in the Post-World War II PeriodThis paper analyses the trends in within-country inequality during the post-World War II period, with particular attention to the last 20 years, on the basis of a review of the relevant literature and of an econometric analysis of inequality trends...
Working Paper
Social Groups and Economic PovertyThis paper points to some elementary conflicts between the claims of interpersonal and intergroup justice as they manifest themselves in the process of seeking a real-valued index of poverty which is required to satisfy certain seemingly desirable...
Working Paper
Impact of Trade Liberalization on Returns from LandTrade liberalization, by aligning domestic prices with world prices, is envisaged to bring welfare gains to a country. In the case of Indian agriculture, owing to the vastness and diversity of the sector, the impact is likely to be profoundly unequal...
Working Paper
Measuring the Quality of Life Across CountriesThis paper attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of interrelationships among the determinants of the quality of life (QOL). We show that various measures of well-being are highly sensitive to domains of QOL that are considered in the...
Working Paper
Measuring Inequality Without the Pigou-Dalton ConditionTypical welfare and inequality measures are required to be Lorenz consistent which guarantees that inequality decreases and welfare increases as a result of a progressive transfer. We explore the implications for welfare and inequality measurement of...
Working Paper
Ordinal Multidimensional InequalityThis paper proposes a concept of inequality comparisons with ordinal multidimensional categorical data. In our model, one population is more unequal than another when they have common arithmetic median outcomes and the first can be obtained from the...
Working Paper
Reforms, Remoteness and Risk in AfricaThis study traces the interactions between economic growth, income inequality and consumption poverty in a sample of African countries during the 1990s. It draws on the much-improved household data sets now available in the region. It finds that...
Working Paper
Measurement of a Multidimentional Index of Globalization and its Impact on Income InequalityIn this paper we present two composite indices of globalization. The first is based on the Kearney/Foreign Policy magazine and the second is obtained from principal component analysis. They indicate which countries have become most globalized and...
Working Paper
Quo Vadis? Inequality and Poverty Dynamics across Russian RegionsThis paper analyses regional data on inequality and poverty in Russia during 1994-2000 using published series from the regionally representative Household Budget Survey. The paper finds that the share of inequality in Russia coming from the between...
Working Paper
Women's Status and Children's Food Security in PakistanThis study examines the role of women's intra-household status relative to men in children's food security in Pakistan. Data from the 1991 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS) yield a measure of evidence of a positive relation between women's...
Working Paper
Globalization and Regional Income InequalityChina’s recent accession to the WTO is expected to accelerate its integration into the world economy, which aggravates concerns over the impact of globalization on the already rising inter-region income inequality in China. This paper discusses China...
Working Paper
For whom does the phone (not) ring?Using an audit experiment carried out on of India’s largest real estate websites, we document striking variations between landlords’ treatment of upper-caste Hindus, Other Backward Castes, Scheduled Castes, and Muslims. We find strong evidence of...
Working Paper
The Reliability of Small Area Estimation Prediction Methods to Track PovertyTracking poverty is predicated on the availability of comparable consumption data and reliable price deflators. However, regular series of strictly comparable data are only rarely available. Poverty prediction methods that track consumption...
Working Paper
Regional Poverty and Income Inequality in Central and Eastern EuropeThis paper reports levels of income inequality and poverty in four Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia. Unlike many previous researchers who examine transition economies, we aggregate the detailed...
Working Paper
How Responsive is Poverty to Growth? A Regional Analysis of Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in Indonesia, 1984-99This paper uses six nationally representative household consumption surveys to develop successive poverty profiles for Indonesia over a fifteen-year period of sustained high growth followed by rapid contraction. Adopting a ‘cost-of-basic-needs’...
Working Paper
Are Neighbours Equal? Estimating Local Inequality in Three Developing CountriesBased on a statistical procedure that combines household survey data with population census data, this paper presents estimates of inequality for three developing countries at a level of disaggregation far below that allowed by household surveys...
Working Paper
Divergent Means and Convergent Inequality of Incomes among the Provinces and Cities of Urban ChinaTwo precisely comparable national household surveys relating to 1988 and 1995 are used to analyse changes in the inequality of income in urban China. Over those seven years province mean income per capita grew rapidly but diverged across provinces...
Working Paper
Income Inequality in Rural ChinaA considerable literature exists on the measurement of income inequality in China and its increasing trend. Much less is known, however, about the driving forces of this trend and their quantitative contributions. Conventional decompositions, by...
Working Paper
Fifty Years of Regional Inequality in ChinaThis paper constructs and analyses a long-run time-series for regional inequality in China from the Communist Revolution to the present. There have been three peaks of inequality in the last fifty years, coinciding with the Great Famine of the late...
Working Paper
Industrial Location and Spatial InequalityWe argue that spatial inequality of industry location is a primary cause of spatial income inequality in developing nations. We focus on understanding the process of spatial industrial variation—identifying the spatial factors that have cost...
Working Paper
Explaining Poverty EvolutionMeasuring poverty remains a complex and contentious issue. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa where poverty rates are higher, information bases typically weaker, and the underlying determinants of welfare relatively volatile. This paper...
Working Paper
Separate but Equal Democratization?Many commentators have noted the existence of a historical correlation between cities and democratization. This image of the city as an inherently civic space is linked to the notion that the spatial concentration intrinsic to urban contexts promotes...
Working Paper
Irregular Urbanization as a Catalyst for Radical Social MobilizationThis study focuses on the city of São Paulo, Brazil and examines the ways in which irregular and illegal growth have influenced the collective action of social movements of the urban poor. The study describes how São Paulo grew as a socially...
Working Paper
Growth, Inequality, and Poverty Reduction in Developing CountriesThe study presents recent global evidence on the transformation of economic growth to poverty reduction in developing countries, with emphasis on the role of income inequality. The focus is on the period since the early/mid-1990s when growth in these...
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