Journal Article
The individual poverty incidence of growth
The canonical approach to analyse the poverty impact of growth is based on the comparison of poverty before and after growth. Measurement tools endorsing this approach fail to capture the different experiences of poverty dynamic in the population...
Blog
Changing the lives of very young children: Evidence from Rwanda
by
Patricia Justino, Marinella Leone, Pierfrancesco Rolla, Monique Abimpaye, Caroline Dusabe, Diane Uwamahoro, Richard Germond
November 2020
Globally, around 250 million children under the age of five do not meet key development milestones, which reduces their ability to reach their full...
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
The individual poverty incidence of growth
The canonical approach to analysing the poverty impact of growth is based on the comparison of poverty before and after growth. Measurement tools that endorse this approach fail to capture the different experiences of poverty dynamics in the...
Blog
The Great Gatsby Curve and the Global South: Time for a more ambitious redistribution and reparations agenda
The famous 1920s book The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is the classic analogy for the American dream of meritocracy —that any person can...
Working Paper
Degrees of disadvantage
This study is positioned in two strands of literature—intersectionality and social mobility. It is the first to measure (dis)advantage at the individual level as an outcome of the intersectionality of identities and parental circumstances. By linking...
Working Paper
Return migration and socioeconomic mobility in MENA
This study examines the effects of cross-border return migration on intertemporal and intergenerational transmission of socio-economic status across six new harmonized surveys from three Arab countries: Egypt (1998, 2006, 2012), Jordan (2010, 2016)...
Working Paper
Human capital and social mobility in low- and middle-income countries
Parental human capital and endowments may affect children’s human capital, which in turn may affect children’s earning and occupations and thus affect social mobility. This paper focuses on what we know about these possible links in low- and middle...
News
Press release - Professor Kunal Sen starts as the director of UNU-WIDER
‘Economic transformation needs to be accompanied by political and social transformations if we are to see drastic increases in human wellbeing’
Lecture
Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Pathways for Research and Policy
Kunal Sen gives a keynote address at the Annual Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) Conference on Development (ABCD) 2021. The keynote address, on the topic of 'Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Pathways for Research and Policy'...
Fri, 3 December 2021
Lakeshore Hotel,
House no. 46 Gulshan 2,
Dhaka,
Bangladesh
Past event
Panel discussion
Social mobility in the Global South – beyond poverty and inequality reduction
A new book, Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Concepts, Methods, and Determinants, produced by UNU-WIDER and edited by Vegard Iversen, Anirudh Krishna, and Kunal Sen and published by Oxford University Press offers students, researchers, and...
Wed, 6 April 2022
University of Greenwich Stockwell Street,
10 Stockwell St. - Room LT 0004,
East Greenwich, London,
United Kingdom
Past event
Lecture
13th B.G. Kumar Lecture Is India a Land of Opportunity? delivered by Professor Kunal Sen
The recording of this lecture is available here. Professor Kunal Sen delivers the 13th B.G. Kumar Lecture on 'Is India the Land of Opportunity?' at the Center for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. The lecture begins at 15:30...
Mon, 21 November 2022
CDS, Prasanth Nagar, Medical College P.O.,
Ulloor, Thiruvananthapuram,
Kerala,
India
Past event
Presentation
Social mobility in developing countries: Pathways for research and policy
Social mobility is critical to major global goals, those enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals and to the broader goals of development. Yet, little attention has been given to a serious study of social mobility in developing countries to...
Mon, 9 May 2022
Online,
Finland
Past event
Presentation
Social mobility in developing countries: Pathways for research and policy at Shiv Nadar University
Social mobility is critical to major global goals, those enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals and to the broader goals of development. Yet, little attention has been given to a serious study of social mobility in developing countries to...
Fri, 22 April 2022
Online,
India
Past event
News
Call for Contributions: GlobalDev and UNU-WIDER Blog series on social mobility
In the last decades, globalization and technological advancements have improved the living standards of billions of people, and enabled many households to cross the poverty line. Nonetheless, these trends have also exacerbated inequalities around the...
Working Paper
Economic approach to intergenerational mobility
This paper provides a critical survey and synthesis of the recent economic literature on intergenerational mobility in developing countries, with a focus on data and methodological challenges. The attenuation due to measurement error is compounded by...
Working Paper
Structural poverty dynamics in urban South Africa
This paper examines the extent and determinants of structural poverty dynamics in South Africa, focusing on the socio-economically disadvantaged urban African population. The quantitative analysis using panel data is triangulated with evidence from a...
Working Paper
Will urbanization raise social mobility in the South, replicating the economic history of the West?
As developing countries rapidly urbanize, the number of people living in ‘slums’—neighbourhoods lacking property rights and basic services—continues to increase. Whether slum residents will ultimately share in the benefits of the cities they help...
Working Paper
Concepts of social mobility
This paper has two purposes. The first is to define clearly different social mobility concepts and components. The second is to embed these concepts and components into a larger context of social mobility research. The core of the paper develops six...
Working Paper
Social mobility in China
This study analyses intergenerational class mobility in China as a case study of a quantitative sociological approach to social mobility research in the Global South. Drawing on national representative surveys collected between 2010 and 2015 in China...
Working Paper
Social mobility and inequality between groups
The relationship between social mobility and inequality is well studied in the literature, but far greater attention has been paid to ‘vertical’ than to ‘horizontal’ inequality. This paper focuses on mobility and horizontal inequality between ethnic...
Research Brief
Three key insights for research on social mobility in developing countries
The volume, Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Concepts, Methods, and Determinants, brings together leading scholars from a range of social science disciplines working on a variety of issues related to social mobility. Three motivations guide...
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...
Blog
Urban poverty: cities, slums, and the need for policy action
by
Emily Rains, Anirudh Krishna
October 2022
Developing countries will be predominantly urban by 2030. While urbanization is historically associated with development and broad-based social...
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
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...
Research Brief
What do we need to know about social mobility in the Global South?
The volume, Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Concepts, Methods and Determinants, brings together leading scholars from several disciplines to advance research practice on social mobility. Three sets of motivations guide this joint effort...
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
Foreign aid and intergenerational mobility in Africa
While there is extensive literature examining the growth and development effects of foreign aid, very little attention has been paid to its potential impact on social mobility. Thus, this paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of...
Blog
Not too long and not too short: Introducing the new UNU-WIDER and Cambridge University Press series in Development Economics
Simon Kuznets’ pipe dream was to have economic inequality data that rarely existed when he was writing. What are the pipe dreams of today’s...
Blog
Social mobility among disadvantaged groups in India
In recent decades, India has experienced rapid economic growth alongside radical affirmative action programs enacted since independence. This column...
Presentation
Maria Lo Bue and Khoa Vu to present in YoDEV Webinar Series
Maria Lo Bue and Khoa Vu will present their work from the Social mobility in the Global South project on intergenerational mobility in Viet Nam. This presentation is a part of the Young Development Economists Webinar Series and will take place at 15...
Thu, 14 January 2021
Past event
Project
Disadvantaged groups and social mobility
Theme: Inclusion
This project has three main objectives in line with UNU-WIDER’s tradition in the area of inclusion and horizontal inequality: (1) to shed further light on the extent to which inequalities run along ethnic, gender, and other communal lines; (2) to...
Policy workshop
Labour market inequality and intergenerational mobility
UNU-WIDER hosts an inception workshop on labour market inequality and intergenerational mobility part of the new inequality theme as part of our current 2024–27 work programme. On 16 April 2024, we host a collaborative brainstorming session that...
Tue, 16 April 2024
Hybrid,
Katajanokanlaituri 6 B,
Helsinki,
Finland
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
Presentation
Kunal Sen on The Jobs Challenge in Asia and the Pacific
Kunal Sen joins the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific (RBAP) Economist Network webinar to present on the jobs challenge in Asia-Pacific. The webinar presents insights from the UNU-WIDER book Job Ladder.The webinar tackles the following...
Wed, 4 September 2024
Bangkok,
Thailand
Past event
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