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Measuring Poverty Over TimeLuc Christiaensen and Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen If a person suddenly becomes poor, for example, due to an unexpected death or illness in the family...
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Working Paper
Out of School and (Probably) in WorkThis paper explores the hypothesis that the phenomenon of child labour is explicable in terms of poverty that compels a household to keep its children out of school and put them to work in the cause of the household’s survival. In exploring the link...
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
The Human Development Index Adjusted for Efficient Resource UtilizationThe human development index (HDI) developed by the United Nations Development Programme is computed as the average of three equally weighted outcome measures: life expectancy (LI), educational attainment (EI) and income (WI). However, this...
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
A Framework for Incorporating Environmental Indicators to the Measurement of Human Well-BeingThis study, relying on an economic-theoretical approach to index numbers, proposes a framework for incorporating environmental indicators to the measurement of human well-being. Furthermore this study also proposes an improvement index which...
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
OECD Domestic Support and Developing CountriesAn AGE model with detailed farm supply and substitution relationships is used to analyze impacts of OECD domestic support reform on developing economy welfare. Stylized simulations indicate reforms best suited for reducing trade distortions with...
Working Paper
Looking Beyond Averages in the Trade and Poverty DebateThere has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness, as one aspect of ‘globalization’. The paper views the issue through both ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ empirical lenses. The macro lens uses cross-country...
Working Paper
Assessing Well-being Using Hierarchical NeedsDetermining whether well-being has improved is an important multidisciplinary task. It is important therefore to develop a multidimensional measure of well-being that reflects a wide spectrum of human needs. A new approach is presented in this paper...
Working Paper
On the Distributional Implications of Social Protection Reforms in Latin AmericaThe paper tracks recent changes in the components of social protection in Latin America, the reforms to social insurance in the 1990s and the growth of social assistance in the 2000s, and assesses their effects on poverty and inequality and...
Working Paper
Human Well-beingEconomic measures of income have ignored large areas of human well-being and are poor measures of well-being in the areas to which they attend. Despite increased recognition of those distortions, ‘GNP per capita continues to be regarded as the...
Working Paper
Multidimensional first-order dominance comparisons of population wellbeingIn this paper, we convey the concept of first-order dominance (FOD) with particular focus on applications to multidimensional population welfare comparisons. We give an account of the fundamental equivalent definitions of FOD, illustrated with simple...
Working Paper
Multidimensional Poverty in NigeriaThis study appraises non-monetary multidimensional poverty in Nigeria using the novel first order dominance approach developed by Arndt et al. (2012). It examines five dimensions of deprivation: education, water, sanitation, shelter, and energy-using...
Working Paper
Growth, Poverty and Inequality in RwandaThis study focuses on growth, poverty and inequality in Rwanda. We take a broad perspective, in two respects. First, we consider a long time period so as to compare the current situation with the pre-war situation, allowing us to assess whether the...
Working Paper
Multidimensional Welfare in Districts of ZambiaIn this paper we make welfare comparisons among districts of Zambia using multidimensional well-being indicators observed at the household level using the first order dominance approach developed by Arndt et al. in 2012. This approach allows welfare...
Working Paper
The Impact of Food Price Volatility on Consumer Welfare in CameroonThe objective of this paper is to analyse the welfare effects of food price volatility on Cameroonian consumers. Using data from the third Cameroonian Household Consumption Surveys, the price elasticities are obtained from a Quadratic Almost Ideal...
Working Paper
Spatial and temporal multidimensional poverty in NigeriaNigeria has recorded impressive growth in the last decade, yet the impact of this growth on poverty reduction remains unclear. This paper appraises spatial and temporal non-monetary multidimensional poverty in Nigeria using the first-order dominance...
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
Access to Land and Land Policy ReformsThe objective of this research and policy brief is to analyse different mechanisms of access to land for the rural poor in an era when redistribution through expropriative land reform is largely inconsistent with the forces of the political economy...
Working Paper
Policy Co-ordination and Growth Traps in a Middle-income Country SettingSouth Africa has exhibited tepid economic growth over the past twenty years as well as high levels of income inequality characteristic of a middle income country growth trap. This paper compares and contrasts South Africa’s growth trap relative to...
Working Paper
Growth, Poverty, and InequalityThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the growth performance of the Cameroonian economy from independence in 1960 to date, and then to use this as a background for the analysis of poverty, inequality, and non-monetary outcomes. The analysis of...
Working Paper
Monetary Inequality Among Households in TogoThis paper aims at measuring and analysing for the first time inequality in the distribution of expenditures among households in Togo according to the characteristics of household heads. The study is based on the most recent survey (QUIBB 2006) and...
Working Paper
Consumption Bundle Aggregation in Poverty MeasurementOfficial poverty figures in Uganda are flawed by the fact that the underlying poverty lines are based on a single national food basket that was constructed in the early 1990s. In this paper, we estimate a new set of poverty lines that accounts for...
Working Paper
Multi-dimensional Poverty Analysis for TanzaniaAs in much of sub-Saharan Africa, Tanzania has attained rapid economic growth accompanied by only marginal reductions in poverty. Is this mismatch between high economic growth and less significant poverty reduction due to how growth and poverty are...
Working Paper
Indices of Social Development and their Application to AfricaThis paper, using a new set of social development indices, explores the measurement of social development across Africa, and how this relates to broader development patterns and measurement. Development practitioners worldwide increasingly recognize...
Policy Brief
Measuring Human Well-beingThis Policy Brief is an outcome of the UNU-WIDER research project 'Social Development Indicators'. The overall aim of the project was to provide insights into how human well-being might be better conceptualized and, in particular, measured, by...
Working Paper
Poverty, Vulnerability, and Reference Dependent UtilityIn this paper we argue that the recent evidence on individuals’ decision making is of high relevance for the measurement of poverty when switching from a static and certain to a dynamic and uncertain framework. The numerous proposed measures of multi...
Working Paper
Utility-Consistent Poverty in Madagascar, 2001-10We use Arndt and Simler’s (2010) utility-consistent approach to calculating poverty lines to analyse poverty in Madagascar in 2001, 2005 and 2010. Because two major political crises occurred between the survey periods, the snapshots of national...
Working Paper
Utility-Consistent Poverty in Ethiopia, 2000–11We use Arndt and Simler’s utility-consistent approach to calculating poverty lines to analyse poverty in Ethiopia in 2000, 2005, and 2011. Poverty reduction was steady but uneven, with gains greatest in urban areas in the first half of the decade...
Working Paper
Estimating multidimensional childhood poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 2007 through 2013After years of economic decline, conflict, and instability, the Democratic Republic of Congo achieved rapid economic growth in the 2000s along with a reduction in rural consumption poverty. This paper evaluates the extent to which recent growth has...
Working Paper
Does Food Insecurity Impact Subjective Evaluation of Well-being?Understanding the relationship between food insecurity and subjective evaluation of well-being is critical in designing social welfare policies, especially in developing countries. Surprisingly, literature on the topic is scarce. This study adopted...
Working Paper
The Fall of the ElephantAt the end of the 1980s, Côte d’Ivoire entered a deep macroeconomic crisis that put an end to the often-praised ‘Ivorian miracle’. After the death of the founding father Houphouet-Boigny, unrestrained political competition added to bad economic...
Working Paper
Climate Variability and Household Welfare in Northern GhanaClimate variability poses a major risk to agricultural incomes in Africa. In Ghana, most of the country’s poor people live in the north and households find it difficult to hold back their productive assets during the lean season. This study...
Working Paper
Demobilization, Land and Household LivelihoodsWith the overthrow of the Derg in 1991, some 500,000 ex-soldiers needed to be demobilized and reintegrated back into their communities. Successfully integrating such a large number of ex-soldiers is clearly important to social stability. While...
Journal Article
Can commercial farming promote rural dynamism in sub-Saharan Africa?The impact of commercial farms on smallholders in developing countries remains highly controversial. This study draws on four periods of investments in commercial farming in Mozambique to frame an empirical analysis of their contemporary economic...
Working Paper
The Transition's Mortality Crisis in East GermanySeveral studies have indicated an increase in men's mortality in East Germany between 1989 and 1991 in the wake of the reunification of 1990. For some age-groups, death rates soared by up to thirty per cent. This study investigates the evolution and...
Working Paper
Social and Political Indicators of Human Well-beingA plethora of what are loosely described as social and political indicators of well-being exist. Both the range and country coverage of these indicators has increased appreciably in recent years. In this paper we ask what contribution these...
Book Chapter
Assessing Progress in Welfare Improvements in ZambiaPart of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Book Chapter
Slow Progress in Growth and Poverty Reduction in CameroonPart of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Book Chapter
Utility-Consistent Poverty in Madagascar, 2001-10Part 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
From the Editor's Desk (December 2011)
Tony Addison With the end of the year fast approaching, we bring you the last Angle of 2011. Here in Helsinki, the shortest day of the year is nearly...
Working Paper
Zaire after MobutuThe recent history of Zaire presents a unique opportunity to understand and explain humanitarian emergencies. This monograph follows an inductive approach in analysing the trajectory of state-building in Zaire as a significant explanatory variable of...
Working Paper
Fundamental Economic and Social ChangeThe transition from plan to market has fundamentally transformed the social structure in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. The small Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan exemplifies these changes.Using data from nationally...
Working Paper
Descriptions of InequalityAlready in the 1950s it became clear that, in spite of its widespread use, the per capita gross national product is an insufficient measure of the well-being of citizens. Thus, in 1954, an expert group within the United Nations suggested that one...
Working Paper
The J-curve is a Gamma-curveA one-good, representative consumer model of the pre-reform consumer sector of transition economies is developed. An equation is derived that permits empirical estimation of the welfare effect of price liberalization. Empirical estimates are...
Working Paper
Poverty and Welfare Measurement on the Basis of Prospect TheoryThis paper examines the measurement of social welfare, poverty and inequality taking into account features that have been found to be important welfare determinants in behavioural economics. Most notably, we incorporate reference-dependence, loss...
Journal Article
Limited commitment and crowding out of private transfersThis paper studies some empirical implications of models with limited risk sharing due to the imperfect enforceability of contracts. We test whether the amount by which public transfers reduce private transfers is affected by features of the economy...
Journal Article
Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety NetsPoor rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial risks, which they handle with risk-management and risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance through savings and informal insurance mechanisms. Despite these mechanisms...
Blog
Inequality in Focus at UNU-WIDER27 August 2014 Jukka Pirttilä and Tony Addison The last few months have seen major research activity in the area of inequality at UNU-WIDER. An update...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (June 2013)
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...
Book Chapter
Growth, Poverty Reduction, and Inequality in RwandaPart of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Working Paper
Needs versus ExpediencyConflict depletes all forms of human and social capital, as well as supporting institutions. The scale of the human damage can overwhelm public action, as there are many competing priorities and resources are often insufficient. What then should be...
Blog
Celebrating 30 years of research for development
The celebration of the 30th Anniversary of UNU-WIDER presented the ideal opportunity to look back, take stock, and plan ahead. Where else can a group...
Journal Article
Targeting Social Transfer ProgrammesPart of Journal Special Issue Aid, Social Policy and Development
Working Paper
The Demand Side of Social ProtectionIn fragile states, social protection programmes are often a kaleidoscope of projects financed and implemented by a variety of donors, government agencies and NGOs. Such an environment does not foster a strong sense of ownership by beneficiaries...
Research Brief
The Evolution of Social Protection in Latin AmericaSocial insurance has not succeeded in reducing fiscal deficits and expanding coverage to more beneficiaries in Latin America Social assistance has had a greater impact on poverty and inequality than social insurance In lower-middle-income countries...
Book Chapter
Access to Land and Land Policy ReformsPart of Book Access to Land, Rural Poverty, and Public Action
Displaying 64 of 141 results