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From The Editor's Desk (October 2012)
Tony Addison UNU-WIDER is having a very active and successful autumn. Our climate change and development policy conference at the end of September...
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Blog
The Great African Data Debate
24 September 2013 Carl-Gustav Lindén At the recent UNU-WIDER conference here in Helsinki on inclusive growth in Africa, the quality of national...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (March 2012)
Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (June-July 2012)
Tony Addison I started writing this ‘From the Editor’s Desk’ in Accra, to the sound of an African drum band, preparing for a ceremony to mark the...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (January 2012)
Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (February 2012)
Tony Addison It’s now February, and Helsinki remains deep in snow. We had an extended blizzard last weekend, with temperatures hovering around minus...
Book Chapter
Slow Progress in Growth and Poverty Reduction in CameroonPart of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Blog
From The Editor's Desk (December 2012)
Tony Addison This year has rushed by at speed. For UNU-WIDER it’s been a year of big successes. We will have published some 110 working papers by the...
Book Chapter
Incomes, Inequality, and Poverty in Kenya
– A Long-Term Perspective
Part of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Book Chapter
Utility-Consistent Poverty in Madagascar, 2001-10
– Snapshots in the Presence of Multiple Economy-Wide Shocks
Part of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Book Chapter
Poverty, Inequality, and Prices in Post-Apartheid South AfricaPart of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (August 2012)
Tony Addison With this issue, Angle returns refreshed from its Nordic summer break. The sun continues to shine on the Baltic, although it is getting...
Blog
Foreign Aid for Gender Equality: The Challenge for DonorsMalokele Nanivazo and Lucy Scott The first gender equality workshop under UNU-WIDER’S ReCom—Research and Communication in Foreign Aid project was held...
Blog
Foreign Aid for Gender Equality: Future AgendaThis is the second of a two-part article presenting key discussion points from the UNU-WIDER gender equality workshop held 12-13 July 2012, in...
Blog
The View from Buenos Aires
Tony Addison A visit to Buenos Aires in September provided a good vantage point to look at the euro zone’s deepening crisis. Angle readers will recall...
Blog
Reversing Inequality in Latin America
Annett Victorero Latin America has for a long time been synonymous with high inequality, economic instability and authoritarian politics. However...
Blog
Resilient People, Fragile Governance: The Success of Bangladesh so Far (Part I)
Lucy Scott Bangladesh has made some remarkable strides in development and poverty reduction since independence. Yet the country is in many ways a...
Blog
From the Editor's desk (October 2011)
Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...
Blog
From the Editor's desk (November 2011)
Tony Addison As we come to the end of November, the snow has yet to arrive in Helsinki. We continue to enjoy clear skies and spectacular sunsets...
Book Chapter
Revenue Mobilization for Poverty Reduction
– What We Know, What We Need to Know
Poverty 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?
– Income inequality in former British African colonies
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...
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 nexus
– Additional Evidence
Part 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...
Blog
Aligning Elites with DevelopmentAlice Amsden, Alisa DiCaprio, and James Robinson To understand what role elites play in the process of economic development, we need to establish...
Journal Article
When do relative prices matter for measuring income inequality?
– The case of food prices in Mozambique
Changes in relative prices of commodities consumed in different shares across income groups can be expected to alter real income differentials between these groups. Using Mozambican household budget survey and price data from 2002/03 and 2008/09, we...
Journal Special Issue
Health and DevelopmentThe papers in this special issue were originally presented at a World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) Conference on Health Equity in 2006. They look beyond the current literature in terms of measures of inequality, indicators...
Working Paper
Estimating utility-consistent poverty in Ethiopia, 2000–11We adapt the standardized Poverty Line Estimation Analytical Software (PLEASe) computer code stream based on Arndt and Simler’s (2010) utility-consistent approach to analyse poverty in Ethiopia in 2000, 2005, and 2011. Several data-related issues...
Working Paper
Reversal of the Kuznets Curve
– Study on the Inequality–Development Relation Using Top Income Shares Data
This paper uses recently published top 1% income share series in studying the inequality– development association. The top income shares data are of high quality and cover about a century for some countries and thus provide an interesting opportunity...
Working Paper
Changing Income Inequality and Structural Transformation
– The Case of Botswana 1921-2010
In Sub-Saharan Africa we find some of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. Nevertheless, we generally know very little about the historical development of inequality. In this paper we look at how inequality developed in colonial and...
Working Paper
Poor Health Reporting
– Do Poor South Africans Underestimate Their Health Needs?
Researchers often rely on household survey data to investigate health disparities and the incidence and prevalence of illness. These self-reported health measures are often biased due to information asymmetry or differences in reference groups. Using...
Working Paper
Rethinking the Measurement of the Middle Class
– Evidence from Egypt
The degree of choice households have over their consumption expenditure is critical in deciding their economic class. Applying our measure to Egyptian household budget surveys, we estimate the population size of the middle class in Egypt and assess...
Working Paper
Intra-Household Inequalities in Child Rights and Well-Being
– A Barrier to Progress?
This paper attempts to measure the extent of inequality within households and its contribution to overall levels of inequality in child well-being. The paper analyses the distribution of resources (outcomes) between girls and boys for four indicators...
Working Paper
Threshold and interaction effects in the trade, growth, and inequality relationshipThis paper examines the relationship between trade (exports), growth, and inequality, using a panel of 100 countries over 30 years (1980 to 2010). As there is no clear theoretical relationship between trade (exports) and inequality, and as inequality...
Policy Brief
Rising Spatial Disparities and DevelopmentThe UNU-WIDER project on 'Spatial Disparities in Human Development' has collected and analyzed evidence on the extent of spatial inequalities within developing countries. The studies find that spatial inequalities are high, with disparities between...
Working Paper
Assessing the Impact of Social Grants on Inequality
– A South African Case Study
The democratic government in South Africa has developed a system of social grants to combat the high levels of poverty and inequality inherited from the apartheid regime. With the help of modest economic growth and an associated increase in per...
Working Paper
Can the Context Mediate Macro-Policy Outcomes?
– Contextual Differences in the Returns to Bolsa Familia in Brazil
Local institutional and structural (meso) factors can play a role in mediating the returns to a macro-social policy. I focus on the Brazilian cash-transfer-programme Bolsa Familia and check how contextual features influence the returns to transfers...
Blog
Wealth Distribution, the Financial Crisis and EntrepreneurshipWim Naudé and James C. MacGee Globally, wealth is very unequally distributed, both within countries and between countries. The UNU-WIDER project on...
Journal Article
Explaining the Evolution of Poverty
– the Case of Mozambique
We provide a comprehensive approach for analyzing the evolution of poverty using Mozambique as a case study. Bringing together data from disparate sources, we develop a novel 'back-casting' framework that links a dynamic computable general...
Journal Special Issue
FDI, Employment, and Growth in China and IndiaThe project centers on the inter-linkages between the major developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China's growth on smaller economies and the rest of the...
Journal Special Issue
Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin AmericaGlobalization offers new opportunities for accelerating development and poverty reduction, but also poses new challenges for policymakers. And there is much concern about the distribution of benefits; in particular whether the poor gain from...
Report
Aid in a Post-2015 WorldThe ReCom – Research and Communication on Foreign Aid – programme produced 247 original studies. More than 300 researchers from 59 countries came together and provided evidence on what does and could work in development, and what can be transferred...
Working Paper
Ghana
– Poverty Reduction Over Thirty Years
Ghana is relatively rare among Sub-Saharan African countries in having had sustained positive growth every year since the mid-1980s. This paper analyses the nature of the growth and then presents an analysis of the evolution of both consumption...
Working Paper
Growth and Poverty Reduction in TanzaniaAfter many years of relatively slow growth, Tanzania’s national accounts data report accelerated aggregate growth since around 2000. Our analysis shows that there has been somewhat slower growth in private consumption and in sectors such as...
Working Paper
Schooling Inequality, Returns to Schooling, and Earnings Inequality
– Evidence from Brazil and South Africa
Human capital models imply that both the distribution of education and returns to education affect earnings inequality. Decomposition of these ‘quantity’ and ‘price’ components have been important in understanding changes in earnings inequality in...
Working Paper
Keep it real
– Measuring real inequality using survey data from developing countries
This paper investigates how two effects drive wedges between nominal and real inequality estimates. The effects are caused by (i) differences in the composition of consumption over the income distribution coupled with differential inflation of...
Working Paper
Mozambique
– Off-track or Temporarily Sidelined?
Since 1994, a great deal has been accomplished. We argue that poverty reduction was temporarily sidelined in the 2000s. A series of shocks, especially the fuel and food price crisis of 2008, combined with poor productivity growth in agriculture and a...
Working Paper
Inequality of Opportunity in Educational Achievements
– Cross-country and Intertemporal Comparisons
This paper evaluates fairness in educational achievements through the ordered pair (WEEOp, IEOp) whose components provide: (i) A measure of social welfare which accounts for the achievement of less-advantaged pupils and (ii) a synthetic index of...
Journal Article
Disadvantage and discrimination in self-employment
– Caste gaps in earnings in Indian small businesses
Using the 2004–2005 India Human Development Survey data, we estimate and decompose the earnings of household businesses owned by historically marginalized social groups known as Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCSTs) and non-SCSTs across the earnings...
Book Chapter
'Successful' Development Models
– Lessons from the MENA Region
Part of Book Achieving Development Success
Working Paper
Understanding Ghana’s growth success story and job creation challengesGhana’s status as one of the African Lions is linked to the country’s remarkable growth performance, which culminated in the attainment of lower middle-income status. However, employment response to growth has been weak. Additionally, growth has been...
Working Paper
The Structural Anatomy and Institutional Architecture of Inclusive Growth in Sub-Saharan AfricaThe distinct features of inclusive growth within the context of sub-Saharan Africa are identified. The anatomy of growth is analysed by exploring the interrelationship among growth, inequality, and poverty. The present growth spell appears to have...
Blog
Aid in North Africa after the 'Arab Spring'
Jane Harrigan Donor political interests have heavily influenced aid flows to North Africa in the past. This has reduced the effectiveness of aid which...
Policy Brief
Social and Economic Policies to Prevent Complex Humanitarian Emergencies Lessons from ExperienceIn simple language and with numerous concrete examples, this policy brief analyses the impact - among others - of key ex-ante factors such as acute 'horizontal inequality' between social groups in the distribution of assets, state jobs, social...
Policy Brief
Inequality, Growth and Poverty in the Era of Liberalization and GlobalizationThis policy brief reports the main findings of the study on changes in within-country income inequality over the last two decades and on the links between poverty, inequality, and growth. It focuses on inequality at the national level, i.e. the...
Policy Brief
Poverty, International Migration and AsylumThis WIDER Policy Brief examins issues such as liberalizing migration policies; protecting refugees in regions of origin; addressing the root causes of migration and refugee flows; influencing perceptions of the costs and benefits of migration; and...
Journal Special Issue
Spatial Inequality and Development in AsiaMany developing and transition countries have considerable regional variation in average household income, poverty, and in health and educational status. National human development indicators can therefore mislead policy-makers when large regional...
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