This 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)...
This paper examines the impact of income risk on the level of well-being of rural households in Nigeria. While income risk is defined as the risks associated with variability in income well-being is defined in terms of the level of utility reached by...
This 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...
The paper tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the...
Over the last decade, India has been one of the fastest growing economies, and has experienced considerable decline in overall income poverty. However, in a vast country like India, poverty levels vary significantly across the different states. In...
A 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...
This paper investigates the relationship between criminal activity and geographical isolation. Using data from Madagascar, we show that, after we control for population composition and risk factors, crime increases with distance from urban centers...
In this paper we examine the relative importance of rural versus urban areas in terms of monetary poverty and seven other related living standards indicators. We present the levels of urban-rural differences for several African countries for which we...
In this paper we provide an analytical account of the mechanisms through which globalization, in the sense of increased foreign trade and long-term capital flows, affects the lives of the rural poor in developing countries (in their capacity as...
Many 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...
Many 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...
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, poor in natural resources, and with low levels of human development. Its economy remains agricultural and focused on food crops and cotton production. Over the last twenty years it has experienced...
Evidence obtained from detailed household surveys in Mozambique during the 2008-09 food price shock reveals just how pronounced the impact of food price inflation can be on children’s overall nutrition status. Moderate and severe underweight...
Getting an accurate picture of poverty and inequality trends and patterns in the world's most populous country is central to understanding changes in global inequality and poverty – these alter significantly when China is included or excluded...
This issue analyses the impact of globalization on Africa and present an overview of the six Africa case studies.
Part of Journal Special Issue Entrepreneurship and Conflict
Rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of African development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture’s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration. As a result, African...
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen In October the London School of Economics and Political Science hosted the launch of Urbanization and Development...
Disappointment was widespread when rapid economic growth since 2005, coupled with a smallholder-targeted fertilizer subsidy program, failed to significantly reduce poverty in Malawi. Official estimates for 2011 showed a 1.7 percentage point decline...
Mozambique has now enjoyed eight years of peace after a 16-year war that massively damaged the economy, caused over a million deaths, and displaced more than 3 million people. This paper aims to improve our understanding of how rural societies...
This paper re-examines the current debate on price scissors based on an extended framework, in which the production and trade of industrial consumer goods within the rural sector is incorporated. It confirms that in the economy considered by...
The first part of the paper describes steps which Tanzania took in order to provide key social services to her people. Tanzania made great efforts within the ujamaa socialist system to provide free social services for rural as well as urban people...
Over the past sixty years, most Asian countries have undergone relatively rapid agricultural transformations that helped jumpstart broader economic development. However, the changes have differed markedly in nature and speed across countries of the...
Following the successful implementation of the Doi Moi reform programme, Viet Nam has experienced outstanding economic progress, for example in aggregate output and poverty reduction. For many years, Viet Nam developed much faster than the typical...
Tiếp nối sự thành công của chương trình cải cách Đổi mới, Việt Nam đã gặt hái được rất nhiều thành tựu kinh tế về tăng trưởng và giảm nghèo, Việt nam đã phát triển nhanh hơn các nước đang phát triển khác; và từ năm 2014, sự khác biệt về tăng trưởng...
Research report prepared under Component 5 of the Business Sector Development Programme (BSPS), Hanoi, Vietnam and the Agricultural Sector Programme Support (ASPS), 2013. With DERG, CIEM and IPSARD research teams.The origin of this report dates back...
Research report prepared under Component 5 of the Business Sector Development Programme (BSPS), Hanoi, Vietnam and the Agricultural Sector Programme Support (ASPS), 2013. With DERG, CIEM and IPSARD research teams.The origin of this report dates back...
The first part of the paper describes steps which Tanzania took in order to provide key social services to her people. Tanzania made great efforts within the ujamaa socialist system to provide free social services for rural as well as urban people...
Financial development can exert a significant influence on the distribution of income. In this paper, using Chinese provincial data over the period of 1991-2000 and applying the generalized method of moment (GMM) techniques, we investigate the...
This paper analyzes the evolution of poverty in China from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, employing a version of Shapley decomposition tailored to unit-record household survey data. The changes in poverty trends are attributed to two proximate...
9 December 2013 Simon Feeny Vulnerability and resilience are very closely related terms. Vulnerability is usually referred to as the likelihood of...
29 June 2013 Tony Addison The June-July summer issue of Angle comes to you amid the 19 hours daylight of the Finnish mid-summer. Last week UNU-WIDER’s...
Tony Addison This month saw UNU-WIDER in Stockholm for the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the social sectors’, which took place at Sida on 13 March...
Part of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
The much heralded growth and transformation of many economies in sub-Saharan Africa over the last decade continues to receive prominent attention in academic scholarship and among policy practitioners. An apparent feature about this transformation...
Across the world, people in urban rather than rural areas are more likely to support gender equality. To explain this global trend, this paper engages with geographically diverse literature and comparative rural–urban ethnographic research from...
Malawi’s farm input subsidy benefits the poor and can be part of a viable national development strategy. Agriculture is Malawi’s main economic sector...
Giới thiệu Việt Nam là một nước đông dân ở khu vực Đông Nam Á với lịch sử lâu đời và đặc trưng về kinh tế, chính trị và xã hội.2 Sau khi kết thúc chiến tranh với Hoa Kỳ năm 1975, Việt Nam đã có những tham vọng lớn về tương lai; song mặc dù có nhiều...
This paper analyses the way aid for agriculture and rural development in the global south has changed over time. It finds three key shifts. First, a change in funding priority that has seen aid commitments move to the social sectors. Second is a...
The experience and lessons of the last two decades have shown that ignoring the key differences between the economics of peace and the economics of development has been a major reason why countries relapse into conflict. This paper briefly analyses...
Southern African countries’ interest in biofuel is due of its rural development potential. Finding models to optimize this benefit is therefore paramount. High-energy-density crops with low perishability allow farmers to grow small quantities on...
Part of Book Group Behaviour and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue WIDER Symposium on Analyzing the Socioeconomic Consequences of Rising Inequality in China
30 October 2013 Roger Williamson The UNU-WIDER meeting held last week in New York on the topic of fragility and aid argued forcefully that you cannot...
Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Issues in Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Issues in Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue Globalization-Poverty Channels and Case Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development in Asia
Many developing nations, especially the least developed countries, are subjected to recurrent spells of food insecurity. In order to understand food insecurity in these countries it is necessary to consider not only immediate or trigger-causes of...
HIV/AIDS has a severe impact on food security, affecting all of its dimensions: availability, stability, access, utilization. FAO recognizes that HIV/AIDS is a determining factor for, as well as a consequence of, food insecurity. Although the...
Using a rice village in the Philippines as a social observatory, the impacts of modernization forces under globalization on rural poverty are assessed based on data collected from recurrent household surveys over the past three decades. After...
This article aims to contribute to the discussion about how to make development interventions more effective by analyzing the factors contributing to the success or failure of rural development projects. We made an aggregate level analysis of 46...
The paper considers the impact of livelihoods oriented agricultural service provision for smallholder farmers on gender relationships and food security. The paper contents that the democratization and liberalization of agricultural services towards...
Using data from the 1995 Malawi Financial Markets and Food Security Survey, this study seeks to discover if women’s relative control over household resources or intra-household bargaining power in rural Malawi, gauged by their access to microcredit...
Prioritizing public investments requires information on relative returns that are difficult to derive from disparate evaluation studies. This paper presents a ‘hybrid’ approach that combines ex post evaluation data with an economy-wide model for...
Rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of African development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture’s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration. As a result, African...
Part of Journal Special Issue African Development in an Urban World
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Urbanization is one of the critical global trends shaping the future of humanity. At the same time, it has been argued that full development requires an urbanized environment. This paper attempts to examine and characterize the major phases of...
Widespread rural poverty in Africa and the success of Asia’s Green Revolution suggest that agriculture is a key sector for African development. However, in response to recent skepticism, this paper examines whether the conventional wisdom about...
Participatory approaches are an increasingly prominent technique for designing agricultural strategies in sub-Saharan Africa. However, they are frequently criticised for either not involving enough stakeholders or limiting the scope of their...
This paper examines the gendered nature of asset accumulation between 1978 and 2004 in Indio Guayas, a low-income community on the periphery of the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. In so doing, it emphasizes both the importance of combining quantitative...
It is well known in theory that certain forms of non-linear dynamics in household incomes can yield poverty traps and distribution-dependent growth. The potential implications for policy are dramatic: effective social protection from transient...
Part of Book Vulnerability in Developing Countries
Increased openness is seen by some as a panacea for development while for others it is a recipe for disaster for the poor. Using the example of Ethiopia, this paper discusses some of the key challenges faced by some of the poorest African countries...
This paper investigates the factors that influence market participation in rural economies. This is based on the premise that participation in the market is an important channel through which the global economy impacts on the rural areas and can have...
This paper investigates the economic conditions of rural households in China. Historical survey data indicate that over 80 per cent of rural households earn less than 4,500 yuan in net disposable income each year, that for the vast majority of rural...
In India, caste shapes access to a variety of resources and outcomes mainly through its influence on inter-generational prosperity, but also the linked phenomenon of discrimination. This paper examines whether caste-based differences in access to...
The interaction between available individual and collective resources in the determination of health is largely ignored in the literature on the relationship between poverty and health in developing countries. We analyse the role public resources...
This paper attempts to contribute to the understanding of the impacts of secure rural agricultural land rights on labour structural transformation from agriculture to non-agriculture as well as on urbanization, with a specific focus on Thailand...
Part of Book Urbanization and Development
There are many studies on the effects of conditional cash transfer programmes on enrolment, productivity and poverty reduction but very few on causal effects on ages at marriage and first birth. And none of them considers the convergence effect. This...
Part of Book Access to Land, Rural Poverty, and Public Action
Part of Book Access to Land, Rural Poverty, and Public Action
Part of Book Access to Land, Rural Poverty, and Public Action
Part of Book Group Behaviour and Development
Part of Book Group Behaviour and Development
Part of Book Social Provision in Low-Income Countries
Part of Book From Conflict to Recovery in Africa
Part of Book Advancing Development
Part of Book Health Inequality and Development
Part of Book Understanding Inequality and Poverty in China
Part of Book Understanding Inequality and Poverty in China
Part of Book The Impact of Globalization on the World's Poor
Part of Book Food Insecurity, Vulnerability and Human Rights Failure
Tony Addison This month saw the visit of Kaushik Basu, the World Bank’s new Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, to...
Part of Book Spatial Inequality and Development
Part of Book Spatial Disparities in Human Development
Part of Book Food Security
Part of Book The Political Economy of Hunger
Part of Journal Special Issue The Impact of Globalization on the World's Poor
Part of Book Dominating Knowledge
This paper investigates evidence of a possible spatial mismatch in South Africa’s metropolitan labour market that could contribute towards explaining why black unemployment rates are significantly higher than white unemployment rates. The spatial...
This paper proposes a framework for inequality decomposition in which inequality of the target variable, e.g., income, can be decomposed into components associated with any number of determinants or proxy variables in a regression equation. The...
What exactly is spatial inequality? Why does it matter? And what should be the policy response to it? These questions have become important in recent years as the spatial dimensions of inequality have begun to attract considerable policy interest. In...
Part of Book Informal Labour Markets and Development
Part of Book Linking the Formal and Informal Economy
Part of Journal Special Issue WIDER Symposium on Analyzing the Socioeconomic Consequences of Rising Inequality in China
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The household survey data used in...
Part of Book Growth, Structural Transformation, and Rural Change in Viet Nam
Part of Book Growth, Structural Transformation, and Rural Change in Viet Nam
The natural resource sector in Liberia has failed to produce links to other important sectors of the economy, and in particular has failed to create jobs for the large majority of the population. Creating new and productive jobs is key to national...
Zhicheng Liang The Chinese economy has experienced impressive growth over the last two decades. However, this rapid growth has been accompanied by...
In this interview C. Peter Timmer, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, reflects on the conditions of possibility of structural transformation in...
This paper investigates how a development intervention which targets extremely poor households with investment capital influences relationships between those households and the landowning elite. It places this investigation in the context of the...
Facilitadores Judiciales is a programme run by the Organization of the American States and the Nicaraguan judiciary. The main objective of the programme is to improve access to justice for the disadvantaged people in Nicaragua. From 1998 to 2010 the...
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