Working Paper
Is inequality underestimated in Mozambique?
Household budget surveys in sub-Saharan Africa are designed to facilitate poverty measurement and may fail to fully capture consumption in wealthy households. As a result, inequality is likely underestimated. We address upper tier consumption...
Blog
Taking steps to overcome inequality in South Africa
by
Carlos Gradín
June 2017
Engagement is needed at all levels to address ongoing inequality faced in South Africa. This was the primary aim of a recent policy seminar in...
Working Paper
Global inequality in length of life, 1950–2015
This paper provides a broad picture of national, regional and global trends of inequality in length of life over the period 1950–2015. We use data on life tables from World Population Prospects to develop a comprehensive database of a battery of...
Working Paper
Inequality and fiscal redistribution in Mexico
This paper uses income and expenditure surveys from 1992 to 2014 and public tax and spending accounts to estimate the redistributive impact of Mexico’s fiscal system over this period. It presents standard and marginal benefit incidence analysis for...
Journal Special Issue
Inequality
Many low- and middle-income countries are achieving good rates of economic growth, while high inequality remains a priority concern. Some countries meanwhile have low growth, high inequality, and pervasive poverty—often linked to their fragility...
Journal Article
Inequality
Part of Journal Special Issue
Inequality
Journal Article
Global inequality
Part of Journal Special Issue
Inequality
Working Paper
Inequality, ethnicity, and social cohesion
How do changes in socio-economic inequality between ethnic groups affect interethnic ties in a divided society? I analyse the evolution of cross-ethnic marriages in a society affected by violence along ethnic boundaries and make three principal...
Working Paper
Labour income inequality in Mexico
We analyse the evolution and proximate determinants of labour income inequality in Mexico between 1989 and 2017. Labour income inequality increased between 1989 and 1994 and declined between 1994 and 2006. What happened after 2006 is subject to...
Working Paper
Quantifying the contribution of a subpopulation to inequality
In this paper, I quantify the contribution of a subpopulation to inequality. This is defined as the sum of the contributions of its members, with these contributions computed as the impact on inequality of a small increase in the population mass at...
Working Paper
Estimating the scale of profit shifting and tax revenue losses related to foreign direct investment
Governments’ revenues are lower when multinational enterprises avoid paying corporate income tax by shifting their profits to tax havens. In this paper, we ask which countries’ tax revenues are affected most by this tax avoidance and how much. To...
Working Paper
Extractives for development
Countries face both challenges and opportunities in using their extractive industries to achieve more inclusive development—particularly in the developing world. Yet while a large national income can result from resource wealth, it can also be...
Working Paper
The gender gap, education, and the life cycle profile in the Brazilian formal labour market
We study the trajectory of the gender gap over time and over the life cycle, using a matched employer-employee data from the formal labour market in Brazil. We document the evolution of participation and earnings for both males and females during the...
Working Paper
Earnings inequality in the Brazilian formal sector
This paper documents the evolution and the determinants of earnings inequality in the Brazilian formal sector from 1994 to 2015, using establishment level data. In 2015, schooling explained 33 per cent of overall inequality. Firm-specific effects...
Working Paper
Changing male perceptions of gender equality
Reducing gender inequality is a critically important development challenge, especially in countries with widespread and deep-rooted prejudices against women. In this study, we use a randomized control trial to examine whether facilitating Vietnamese...
Working Paper
Comparing global inequality of income and wealth
This paper is the first to compare global trends in income and wealth inequality this century. It is based on large income and wealth microdata samples designed to be representative of all countries in the world. Measured by the Gini coefficient...
Working Paper
Drivers of inequality in South Africa
The first democratic elections in 1994 brought about the promise for equal opportunity and an overall improvement of living standards for the majority of the South African population. However, 20 years after the democratization of South Africa...
Working Paper
Economic inequality and subjective well-being across the world
We here use repeated cross-section data from the Afrobarometer, Asianbarometer Latinobarometer, and Eurobarometer to analyse the variables that are correlated with both current and future evaluations of standards of living. These are related not only...
Working Paper
Inequality in China
In this paper we describe the major trends in China’s income inequality over the past 40 years and explain them as the outcome of four interleaved stories. The first story is a standard development story characterized by structural change, market...
Working Paper
Investigating growing inequality in Mozambique
In this paper, we investigate the long-term trend of consumption inequality in Mozambique. We show that an imbalanced growth path disproportionally benefited the better-off and caused increasing inequality, especially in more recent years, curbing...
Working Paper
Fiscal pressure of migration and horizontal fiscal inequality
This paper examines the patterns and trends in inter-state migration across Indian states and observes that migration is affected by demographic profile as well as the fiscal profile of states. Econometric estimation suggests that level of vertical...
Working Paper
Educational inequality in Mozambique
In very poor countries, inequality often means that a small part of the population maintains living standards far above the rest. This is also true for educational inequality in Mozambique: only a small segment of the population has access to higher...
Working Paper
Legal empowerment and group-based inequality
Legal empowerment has become widely accepted in development policy circles as an approach to addressing poverty and exclusion. At the same time, it has received relatively little attention from political scientists and sociologists working on...
Blog
The richer your neighbours, the more you borrow – the case of South Africa
by
Shakeba Foster
April 2023
Research on how income inequality affects borrowing behaviour reignited after the 2008 global recession. One prevailing theory is that rising income...
Working Paper
Democracy clusters and patterns of inequality
This paper employs k-means clustering, a multidimensional pattern recognition method, to categorize countries using information from five Varieties of Democracy indices. K-means country clusters are similar but not entirely identical to both k...
Working Paper
Evaluating the impact of the 2023–2024 personal income tax reform in Rwanda
Establishing an equitable and efficient tax system is essential for reducing poverty, combating inequality, and fostering sustainable economic growth. Rwanda’s government has recognized this and implemented significant changes to the personal income...
Book Chapter
Poverty, inequality, and growth
Reducing poverty and inequality and promoting inclusive growth are fundamental to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), approved by the UN General Assembly in September 2015. The first target of SDG1 is to eradicate extreme poverty...
Book Chapter
Inequality and growth
What is the relationship between inequality and growth? This question has occupied and fascinated social scientists for more than a century. This chapter critically reviews the recent empirical and theoretical literature on the complex interplay...
Working Paper
Distributional impacts of agricultural policies in Zambia
This paper examines the distributional impacts of agricultural policies versus those of cash transfers using a tax–benefit microsimulation model for Zambia for the policy year 2020. The analysis also considers the behavioural impacts of input...
Blog
Sunshine, elephants, and boomerangs: Is a dramatic rise in global income inequality looming?
by
Ravi Kanbur, Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez,
Andy Sumner
March 2022
Global Inequality 101: Global inequality is the distribution of income across all people on the planet from the poorest to the richest. It can be...
Blog
Report from the WIDER Development Conference on reducing inequality
For several decades, UNU-WIDER has actively worked on pathfinding and groundbreaking research on inequalities. We host one of the most extensive...
Blog
Inequality, fiscal space, and crisis response — A matter of priority, affordability, or both?
by
Annalena Oppel
October 2022
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments financed more than 5000 fiscal support policies worldwide in 2020–21. The pandemic response is an...
Working Paper
The evolution of inequality in Mozambique
After decades of war, ending in 1992, Mozambique embarked on a path of sustained economic growth and substantial poverty reduction. However, these positive dynamics started to revert from 2015, with per capita growth rates getting close to zero and...
Working Paper
Natural disasters and economic inequality
Natural disasters cause economic damages and may exacerbate disparities in income distribution among countries across the globe. This paper employs satellite data on real-time active fire locations to evaluate the short-term impact of forest fires on...
Blog
Reducing inequality — the great challenge of our time
by
Carlos Gradín
October 2022
Early in October 2022, international and Colombian researchers gathered together for three days at the UNIANDES campus, located at the foot of the...
Blog
Want to catch up on UNU-WIDER research? Here are 10 of the most interesting papers published over the last year
In this blog, the managing editor of the WIDERAngle shares his personal view on some of the most important —and potentially overlooked— work recently...
Journal Article
Changing male perceptions of gender equality
In this study, we use a randomized control trial to examine whether asking Vietnamese men to reflect on gender equality can reduce their gender bias. We randomly selected two groups of married men in four rural provinces and asked the first group to...
Blog
Is a strong middle class the secret to high levels of human development?
by
David Castells-Quintana, Carlos Gradín, Vicente Royuela
April 2023
Many countries today experience increasing or persistent income inequality, a major concern for citizens and politicians alike. This concern is...
Blog
Four global problems that will be aggravated by the UK’s recent cuts to international aid
UK economic forecasts have improved markedly since the September 2022 mini-budget. The economic recession may now be more shallow and public borrowing...
Working Paper
Tax–benefit responses in Uruguay during the COVID-19 pandemic
We analyse the social protection policy response to COVID-19 and its impact on household incomes in Uruguay during 2020 and 2021, based on static microsimulation methods. From the onset of the crisis, the Uruguayan government implemented adjustments...
Working Paper
International migration and income inequality
In this paper we explore the links between international migration and income inequality. After presenting a simple model which considers the role of income distribution in individual decisions to migrate, we estimate a set of models on the...
Blog
Direct support to small scale farmers reduces poverty: What Zambia is doing right
Over half of Zambia’s population lived below the national poverty line in 2015. In rural areas, where 89% of households are engaged in agriculture...
Working Paper
Absolute or relative: perceptions of inequality among young adults in Mozambique
Different concepts of inequality lead to different positions in discussions about whether economic growth leads to increasing inequality. This study investigates how over 1,100 young adults in Mozambique perceive inequality and whether their...
Working Paper
Inequality and human development
In this paper we reassess the relationship between inequality and human development, focusing on the differential effect associated with the concentration of national income at different parts of the income distribution. To do so, we rely on a large...
Working Paper
Who was impacted and how? COVID-19 pandemic and the long uneven recovery in India
We investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on income levels, poverty, and inequality in both the immediate aftermath and during the uneven recovery until December 2021 using high-frequency household survey data from India. We find that the...
Working Paper
Growth and inequality convergence: the role of environmentally related impacts on human capital
We examine inequality convergence over the past three decades and ask if environmentally related impacts on health, and their effect on human capital, are responsible for the slow rate of inequality reduction in countries. Though higher initial...
Blog
Electoral politics and Mexico’s COVID-19 vaccine roll-out
by
Emilio Gutiérrez, Jaakko Meriläinen, Antonio M. Ponce de León
September 2022
Government responsiveness is an integral feature of representative democracy. Its importance could be amplified in times of crisis, especially if...
Working Paper
Programme-135: addressing poverty and inequality in Viet Nam
Viet Nam has achieved remarkable economic growth and poverty reduction since the Doi Moi. However, ethnic minorities and the ethnic majority do not benefit equally from the national economic progress. The proportion of poor households that are ethnic...
Working Paper
Trust in institutions and the profile of inequality
This paper investigates the importance of accounting for the profile of inequality in the analysis of institutional trust. Drawing on individual data from 82 countries around the world over the 1981–2021 period, it sheds light on the potential...
Journal Article
The impact of COVID-19 on consumption poverty in Mozambique
This study assesses the impact of COVID-19 on household consumption poverty. To predict changes in income and the associated effects on poverty, we rely on existing estimated macroeconomic impacts. We assume two main impact channels: direct income...
Working Paper
Poverty, inequality, and growth: trends, policies, and controversies
Reducing poverty and inequality and promoting inclusive growth are fundamental to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Much has changed in the global economy in recent decades and perspectives on progress made vary widely. This...
Working Paper
On data and trends in horizontal inequality
Economic, social, and political inequalities are at the forefront of today’s public debate. While governments around the world have made conscious efforts to promote social inclusion, and major progress in fulfilling basic needs has been witnessed...
Working Paper
Structural transformation, inequality dynamics, and inclusive growth in Bangladesh
The Bangladesh economy has undergone significant structural changes over the last four decades. The share of agriculture in GDP has declined, while the significance of industry and service sectors has increased. These structural changes have been...
Working Paper
Benign growth
Between 1981 and 2017, real gross domestic product in Thailand grew at an average annual rate of 5.7 per cent. Agricultural output grew more slowly than industry or services, and its gross domestic product share consequently declined. Industry’s...
Working Paper
Structural transformation, inequality, and inclusive growth in South Africa
This paper evaluates structural change, inequality dynamics, and industrial policy in South Africa between 1960 and the present day. We find that South Africa experienced growth-enhancing structural transformation until the early 1970s, before...
Working Paper
Wage polarization in a high-inequality emerging economy
Earnings growth in South Africa displayed a U-shaped pattern across the earnings percentiles between 2000 and 2015, resembling wage polarization in the industrialized world. We investigate whether the drivers of this example of wage polarization in...
Working Paper
The changing nature of work and inequality in Brazil (2003–19)
In this paper we use different sources of data on job task content to investigate the importance of occupations and the intensity of routine tasks embodied in them in explaining changes in employment and earnings in Brazil, in particular their...
Blog
Kanika Mahajan – IEA featured economist interview
by
UNU-WIDER
September 2021
Kanika Mahajan, a researcher engaged in UNU-WIDER's project on 'The changing nature of work and inequality', is the August 2021 featured economist of...
Blog
Working together to better understand how COVID-19 affects poverty and inequality
In summer 2020 the SOUTHMOD team set out, with partners, to analyse the impact of government policies on protecting households from getting poorer and...
Blog
Dr Pia Rattenhuber on inequality in crises — an interview
How do crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic influence inequality and the other way around? This year’s UN Day Dresden put a spotlight on “Inequalities...
Journal Article
The political economy of the resource curse
This article reviews the recent literature on the developmental effects of resource abundance, assessing likely effects and channels with respect to key development outcomes. To date, this area has received less analysis, although it is relevant to...
Blog
A ‘data revolution’ for sustainable development leaves gaps on inequality
Among the many things said about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the description by the President of the UN General Assembly’s 70th...
Working Paper
Inequality and structural transformation in the changing nature of work
This paper analyses the labour market dynamics in Indonesia from 2001 to 2015 and explores the role of the changing nature of occupational employment in explaining the rising earnings inequality during the same period. First, we find evidence of a...
Technical Note
WIID Companion (March 2021): data selection
This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the World Income Inequality Database (WIID). It aims at facilitating the analysis of inequality as well as progress in...
Technical Note
WIID Companion (March 2021): integrated and standardized series
This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the World Income Inequality Database. It aims at facilitating the analysis of inequality as well as progress in achieving the...
Technical Note
WIID Companion (March 2021): gobal income distribution
This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the UNU-WIDER World Income Inequality Database. It aims at facilitating the analysis of inequality as well as progress in...
Working Paper
Do pandemics lead to rebellion? Policy responses to COVID-19, inequality, and protests in the USA
This paper analyses how inequality across counties in the United States of America has shaped the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of protests. The empirical analysis combines weekly data between January and December 2020 on levels of...
Blog
Ecuador’s social protection system failed during the pandemic: It needs a rethink
by
H. Xavier Jara, Lourdes Montesdeoca, Iva V. Tasseva
March 2021
Household incomes in Ecuador were badly hit by the pandemic, despite the government’s emergency grant to families. H Xavier Jara Tamayo (University of...
Working Paper
Consolidating behavioural economics and rational choice theory
Using illustrations from research on inequality, this paper offers evidence on the strengths of ‘behavioural synthesis’, i.e. the reconciliation between neoclassical and behavioural economics.We compare how theoretical models of absolute and relative...
Working Paper
The impact of COVID-19 on consumption poverty in Mozambique
This study assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the state of emergency implemented by the Government of Mozambique on household consumption poverty. To predict changes in income and the associated effects on poverty and inequality, we...
Blog
New WIID Companion to improve the study of inequality
by
Carlos Gradín
April 2021
There is a growing need to understand income inequality trends and how they interplay with other social, economic, and political outcomes, both at the...
Blog
Good intentions falling short – the case of pension-related tax expenditures in South Africa
by
Agustin Redonda
April 2021
Tax benefits to boost contributions into pension funds or pension-related tax expenditures (PTEs) are used widely by governments worldwide to address...
Blog
COVID-19 lays bare Cape Town’s social divide, deepens underlying inequalities
by
Simone Schotte, Rocco Zizzamia
April 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic delivered a devastating economic shock to livelihoods across the world. In Cape Town, it has been toughest on those who had just...
Working Paper
Horizontal and intersecting inequalities in Mozambique
This study seeks to add to the research on inequality in least developed countries, namely in Mozambique, by measuring and mapping indicators of horizontal wealth inequality along geographic regions and ethnolinguistic identities. Using census data...
Technical Note
WIID Companion (May 2021): data selection
This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the World Income Inequality Database (WIID). This technical note describes the first stage in constructing the new version...
Technical Note
WIID companion (May 2021): integrated and standardized series
This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the World Income Inequality Database (WIID). A previous note described the selection of income distribution series. Since...
Technical Note
WIID Companion (May 2021): global income distribution
This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the World Income Inequality Database (WIID). This technical note describes the construction of the global distribution...
Working Paper
Exploring economic support networks amidst racial inequality in Namibia
Community or interpersonal support as a critical source of livelihood sustenance in the Global South can exhibit unequal dynamics. An understanding of these practices is primarily tied to the conceptual space of poverty or small communities. Less is...
Working Paper
The indirect costs of corporate tax avoidance exacerbate cross-country inequality
Corporate tax avoidance hampers domestic revenue mobilization and, with it, the development of lower- and middle-income countries. While a wide range of studies has shed light on the magnitude of profit shifting by multinational corporations, the...
Blog
Efforts to protect the poor during COVID: How five African countries fared
The number of people living in poverty around the world is estimated to have increased by half a billion people due to the COVID-19 crisis. The...
Policy Brief
Six sets of policy actions to promote social mobility
Promoting social mobility is an essential task of development, and a multi-faceted one. Precarious livelihoods are widespread. Containing downward mobility is an important precondition for sustaining upward mobility. Policies of human capital...
Working Paper
Inequality and growth: a review on a great open debate in economics
What is the relationship between inequality and growth? This question has occupied and fascinated social scientists for more than a century. This article critically reviews the recent empirical and theoretical literature on the complex interplay...
Working Paper
Income distribution in Uganda based on tax registers: what do top incomes say?
We use income data from tax registers at the Uganda Revenue Authority from 2011 to 2017 to estimate top income inequality, focusing on the very top—the top 1, 0.1, and 0.01 per cent of the income distribution. The focus on the extreme top is...
Blog
Corona pandemic revealed gaps in African social security systems
by
Matti Remes
January 2022
Millions of Africans lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but state social security systems were of little help to people who lost...
Journal Article
On the impact of inequality on growth, human development, and governance
Inequality is a major international development challenge. This is so from an ethical perspective and because greater inequality is perceived to be detrimental to key socioeconomic and political outcomes. Still, informed debate requires clear...
Blog
Advancing social mobility research: Where to start
by
Patrizio Piraino
February 2022
Innovation in academic investigation and policy response is critical to addressing global challenges. That is why the most recent Nobel Prize in...
Working Paper
Revisiting the links between economic inequality and political violence
The main aim of this paper is to explore theoretically important mechanisms through which economic inequalities may affect the emergence of political violence given the forms of social mobilization they (may) generate. The paper identifies and...
Journal Article
The role of automatic stabilizers and emergency tax–beneft policies during the COVID-19 pandemic
By combining household survey data before and during the COVID-19 pandemic with detailed tax-benefit simulations, this paper quantifies the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax-benefit policies in mitigating the immediate...
Journal Article
Normalizing necessity?
Community support is a critical source to sustain livelihoods in the Global South. At the same time, these practices can exhibit unequal dynamics such as disincentives, hierarchies, or adverse inclusion of individuals. However, an understanding of...
Working Paper
The mitigating role of tax and benefit rescue packages for poverty and inequality in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic
This paper analyses the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related tax-benefit measures in 2020 in a cross-country comparative perspective for five African countries: Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. We first estimate...
Working Paper
Learning from experience: Special Economic Zones in Southern Africa
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become common across Southern Africa in the past 20 years. In line with experiences in the rest of the world, they have had at best marginal success. Their essential premise is that it should be more efficient and...
Blog
A summer reading list of our latest papers, articles, and books
At the UNU-WIDER offices here in Helsinki, Finland, the summer holidays are almost upon us. Looking at the list of new UNU-WIDER publications, it is...
Blog
Grandads, dads, and sons: Examining multigenerational mobility in India
While studies have examined the association in socioeconomic status between parent and offspring, there has been relatively little research on...
Working Paper
Anti-discrimination measures in education
Efforts to tackle discrimination in access to basic services have shown mixed results in different country settings. This study examines the positive and negative outcomes attributed to anti-discrimination measures adopted in different country...
Working Paper
Human capital, labour market outcomes, and horizontal inequality in Guatemala
With the second largest indigenous population by percentage in Latin America, Guatemala is an important case for understanding horizontal inequality and indigenous politics. This paper presents new analysis of survey data, allowing for consideration...
Working Paper
Loyalty, trust, and glass ceiling
Whereas most research into microfinance tends to focus on the impact of access to such services, very little pays attention to what happens over time once a person becomes a client. The paper aims at analysing the conditions of loan renewals as most...
Working Paper
Fiscal capacity and social protection expenditure in developing nations
There is scant analysis on the causal relationship between fiscal capacity and social protection expenditure in the developing world. We investigate the causal relationship between fiscal capacity of the state and social protection expenditure...
Presentation
International Economic Association 17th World Congress
UNU-WIDER organized two sessions during the 17th World Congress of the International Economic Association. Learning to Compete – Sunday 8 June 2014 Chaired by Finn Tarp Out of Africa: A comparative perspective on why Africa failed to industrialize...
Fri, 6 June 2014
–
Tue, 10 June 2014
Dead Sea,
Jordan
Past event
Blog
Gender pay gaps on the rise in South Africa
by
Michelle Pleace, Matthew Clance, Nicky Nicholls
January 2024
New analysis of income data in South Africa shows the gender pay gap—how much more men earn than women—has increased. According to findings from a...
Working Paper
Redistribution around the world
This paper re-examines the determinants and consequences of redistribution in light of improved data and methods relative to earlier literature. In particular, we use the latest version of the UNU-WIDER’s Income Inequality Database to have the best...
News
Press release - AL20
United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) in partnership with the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) will host the WIDER Annual Lecture 20 at the Stockholm School of Economics on 23 March 2016. The lecture will be delivered by Martin Ravallion, a leading economist in the study of poverty and policies for fighting it.
Journal Special Issue
Horizontal inequality in the Global South
Inequality and social exclusion receive considerable contemporary policy attention. In the field of international development, inequality—both vertical (between individuals and households) and horizontal (between groups)—is a core concern in the 2030...
Blog
How multinationals continue to avoid paying hundreds of billions of dollars in tax: New research
by
Miroslav Palanský
October 2019
Tax havens have become a defining feature of the global financial system. Multinational companies can use various schemes to avoid paying taxes in...
Blog
Development policy in an era of robots: Views from the experts
Labour-saving technology in the form of robotic systems, artificial intelligence, and advanced computer networks may cause a rapid decline in global...
Blog
Reflections on thinking development, thinking WIDER
What do we talk about at a conference on development economics? Well, robots, rockets, and space, of course. 13 September through 15 September 2018...
Working Paper
Vietnam
This study takes as its starting point what Gunnar Myrdal had to say about Vietnam in the context of his seminal work, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, published in 1968. Myrdal pointed to the decisive nature of the Vietnamese...
Working Paper
New imputation procedures in the measurement of inequality, growth, and poverty in Brazil
This paper develops a new imputation methodology applied to missing incomes values in PNAD. PNAD is the main Brazilian household survey, but it has no imputation. The imputation process starts by fitting regression models applied to different income...
Policy Brief
Horizontal inequality
Inequality—both vertical (between individuals and households) and horizontal (between groups)—is a core concern in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, despite considerable attention to horizontal inequality in both research and...
Working Paper
My journey through the history of development economics
This paper is essentially autobiographical and describes Erik Thorbecke’s journey through the history of development economics between the 1950s and the present. The paper consists of four parts. First, an introduction reviews briefly his...
Policy Brief
Inequality in Mexico
Since 1989, inequality in Mexico has risen, declined, and risen again. The evolution of labour income inequality is at the core of this pattern. To reverse the current trend of rising inequality, access to secondary and tertiary education should...
Policy Brief
Inequality in India on the rise
Following the introduction of economic reforms in the early 1990s, India today is achieving unprecedented per capita growth rates. Poverty reduction has also accelerated and is justly celebrated. There is great concern, however, that this growth is...
Policy Brief
Unequal growth in Mozambique and the region
There is an increasing interest in the analysis of economic inequalities in least developed countries. This is not only the result of a general social preference for equality, but also the consequence of a growing sense that highly unequal societies...
Working Paper
Involuntary migration, inequality, and integration
Across the world, we observe different experiences in terms of inequality between migrant and ‘host-country’ populations. What factors contribute to such variation? What policies and programmes facilitate ‘better’ economic integration? This paper...
Working Paper
Was Kuznets right?
We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960–2012. Countries are in different stages of structural...
Journal Article
Educational opportunities in Indonesia
Not all sources of inequality in educational achievements are fair. But how strong and persistent is the burden of unequal opportunities that each person carries on in their life? In this paper, we define individual indices of the burden of...
Journal Article
Global inequality
Despite the growing interest in global inequality, assessing inequality trends is a major challenge because individual data on income or consumption is not often available. Nevertheless, the periodic release of certain summary statistics of the...
Journal Article
Was Kuznets Right?
We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960–2012. Countries are in different stages of structural...
About
Presentation - AL20
Martin Ravallion’s WIDER Annual Lecture focused on the economic and political issues surrounding the use of direct interventions, such as cash transfers and in kind contributions, against poverty. He highlighted two key lessons that are important for...
Working Paper
Fifty years of Asian experience in the spread of education and healthcare
This paper analyses the dramatic spread of education and healthcare in Asia and also the large variations in that spread across and within countries over 50 years. Apart from differences in initial conditions and income levels, the nature of the...
Working Paper
Socio-economic development in South Asia
The story of South Asia is a topsy-turvy one. Soon after independence from British rule, the region seemed to have a much better prospect than many other parts of the Third World; the prospects soon dimmed, however, as South Asia crawled while East...
Blog
Poverty and inequality – twins or just siblings?
Sitting in the large conference room where we are being invited to ‘Think WIDER’ at the WIDER Development Conference this September. Surrounded by...
Working Paper
The dynamics of spatial and local inequalities in India
Studies of the spatial dimensions of inequality in developing countries are mostly restricted to states, provinces, or districts, typically the smallest geographical units for which data are representative in national surveys. We introduce a...
Working Paper
Intergenerational mobility, human capital accumulation, and growth in India
Productivity and socio-economic progress are inter-connected. Economic growth funds policies that promote socio-economic progress, while the latter serves as a growth engine. A society with high mobility is one where individual achievements are...
Working Paper
Inequality in Mexico
Income inequality in Mexico increased between 1989 and 1994; between 1994 and 2006, inequality declined; and, between 2006 and 2014, inequality was again on the rise. We apply decomposition techniques to analyse the proximate determinants of labour...
Working Paper
Inequality trends and dynamics in India
India today is achieving per capita growth rates that are historically unprecedented. Poverty reduction has also accelerated. There is concern, however, that this growth is being accompanied by rising inequality. We report on a research project that...
Lecture
Trade and gender inequality
Invited Guest Lecturer, Malokele Nanivazo, Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER. Contact Person: Henna Seinälä, University of Jyväskylä
Mon, 26 November 2012
University of Jyväskylä,
Jyväskylä,
Finland
Past event
Annual Lecture
WIDER Annual Lecture 20 - Direct interventions against poverty in poor places
Wed, 23 March 2016
Stockholm School of Economics, Aula,
Sveavägen 65 (entrance from Bertil Ohlins gata),
Stockholm,
Sweden
Past event
About
Contributors - AL20
Short biographies of those who contributed to the event.
Video
Webcast - AL20
View the WIDER Annual Lecture by Martin Ravallion on Direct interventions against poverty in poor places.
Annual Lecture
WIDER Annual Lecture 10 - Global Patterns of Income and Health
People in poor countries live shorter lives than people in rich countries so that, if we take income and health together, there is more inequality in the world than if we consider income alone.
Fri, 29 September 2006
Marina Congress Center,
Katajanokanlaituri 6,
Helsinki,
Finland
Past event
Annual Lecture
WIDER Annual Lecture 9 - The World is not Flat: Inequality and Injustice in our Global Economy
Wed, 26 October 2005
Marina Congress Center,
Katajanokanlaituri 6,
Helsinki,
Finland
Past event
Annual Lecture
WIDER Annual Lecture 6 - Winners and Losers in Two Centuries of Globalization
Professor Jeffrey Williamson of Harvard University accepted the invitation to deliver the 2002 Annual Lecture entitled ‘Winners and Losers in Two Centuries of Globalization’. It took place at the University of Copenhagen on 5 September 2002.
Thu, 5 September 2002
University of Copenhagen,
Nørregade 10,
Copenhagen,
Denmark
Past event
Working Paper
Cash transfers in Latin America
In this paper, we present comparative evidence for eight Latin American countries regarding design and effects of cash transfers (CTs). On the basis of household survey data, we analyse their coverage, importance in household income, and effects on...
Working Paper
Redistribution, inequality and political participation
This paper explores the relationship between a large government cash transfer programme, changes in inequality, and political participation in Mexico. The results show that increases in the coverage of the programme during the 2008 financial crisis...
Working Paper
Addressing poverty and inequality in Viet Nam during the COVID-19 pandemic
This paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related tax-benefit measures in Viet Nam. The focus is on the initial phase of the crisis in 2020. The study delves into how the pandemic affected disposable incomes, examining the...
Working Paper
Will economic growth be sufficient to end global poverty?
In this paper, we present new projections for a range of global poverty-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically, extreme monetary poverty, undernutrition, stunting, child mortality, maternal mortality, and access to clean water and...
Book
Chilean Economic Development under Neoliberalism
This publication examines the process of economic development of the last 50 years or so under the neoliberal model in terms of impacts on growth, inflation, income and wealth distribution and structural change. The analysis includes a historical...
Working Paper
Fiscal policy, inequality, and the poor in the developing world
NOTE | Revised version August 2017 available. View and download the revised version. Using comparable fiscal incidence analysis, this paper examines the impact of fiscal policy on inequality and poverty in 25 countries for around 2010. Success in...
Annual Lecture
WIDER Annual Lecture 5 - Horizontal Inequality: A Neglected Dimension of Development
This lecture will focus on horizontal inequality, i.e. inequality among culturally defined groups (e.g. the Malays and Chinese in Malaysia, Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, or Catholic and Protestants in N.Ireland), and the implications this has for...
Fri, 14 December 2001
Marina Congress Center,
Katajanokanlaituri 6,
Helsinki,
Finland
Past event
Annual Lecture
WIDER Annual Lecture 3 - Is Rising Income Inequality Inevitable? A Critique of the Transatlantic Consensus
Many people believe that rising income inequality is inevitable. It is the result of forces, such as technological change, over which we have no control, or of developments such as globalisation, which are irreversible.
Mon, 1 November 1999
University of Oslo,
Oslo,
Norway
Past event
Working Paper
Labour demand and the distribution of wages in South African manufacturing exporters
This paper contributes to the understanding of the linkages between exporting, labour demand, and wages in South Africa. We disentangle labour market differences between exporters and non-exporters and find that exporters employ more people and pay...
Blog
Research after thirty years
by
Amartya Sen
September 2015
When UNU-WIDER was founded, and I was privileged to be associated with the research being undertaken by the new institute—the main challenges of...
Seminar
The keynote address at the IRSA 16th Annual Conference — Kunal Sen
Kunal Sen is invited to give the Keynote Address at the 2021 Indonesian Regional Science Association's (IRSA) Annual Conference on 12 July. Professor Sen speaks on the main lessons from UNU-WIDER's project on 'The changing nature of work and...
Mon, 12 July 2021
–
Tue, 13 July 2021
Online,
Indonesia
Past event
Seminar
Rachel Gisselquist presents in an expert group meeting on inequality
UNU-WIDER Senior Research Fellow Rachel Gisselquist will give a presentation at an expert group meeting ‘Reducing Inequalities: SDG 10 Progress and Prospects’, organized by the World Bank and UN DESA in Geneva 2-3 April. The event will look at...
Tue, 2 April 2019
–
Wed, 3 April 2019
International Conference Centre Geneva (CICG),
Geneva,
Switzerland
Past event
Panel discussion
A UNU-WIDER special panel on inequality — measurement, implications, and influencing change
Fri, 28 February 2020
House of Science and Letters,
Kirkkokatu 6,
Helsinki,
Finland
Past event
Panel discussion
Launch of the UNDP Human Development Report 2019
Fri, 13 December 2019
Think Corner / Tiedekulma,
Yliopistonkatu 4,
Helsinki,
Finland
Past event
Policy seminar
Political economy of ethnic inequalities and exclusion: Implications for development policy
The Chief Economist Team at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) will host a policy seminar with UNU-WIDER Senior Research Fellow Rachel Gisselquist as a part of the SIDA Evidence for Action Seminar Series. The seminar...
Thu, 6 February 2020
SIDA headquarters,
Valhallavägen 199,
Stockholm,
Sweden
Past event
Project workshop
Social mobility in developing countries — concepts, methods, and determinants
Thu, 5 September 2019
–
Fri, 6 September 2019
UNU-WIDER,
Katajanokanlaituri 6 B ,
Helsinki,
Finland
Past event
Working Paper
Kuznets’ tension in India
Developing countries face a trade-off between the twin objectives of structural transformation and inclusive growth. This is the ‘developer’s dilemma’. This study analyses the dilemma as it manifested itself in the Indian context, and identifies two...
Working Paper
Shifting from deductions to credits
The recent National Health Insurance White Paper proposes redirection of medical tax credits revenue towards the financing of the national health insurance.This raises critical questions about the impact on affordability for the poor as well as...
Working Paper
Structural transformation, inequality, and inclusive growth in China
In this paper, we analyse the relationship between China’s structural transformation and the inclusiveness of its economic growth. China’s economy has undergone significant structural changes since it initiated the economic reforms in 1978. Economic...