A large share of the population in Zambia is living below the national poverty line. To reduce poverty, in 2019, the government initiated the Cash Plus reform, which aims to build on the existing Social Cash Transfer as a floor benefit with...
We use a fiscal incidence model based on the South African 2014/15 Living Conditions Survey to simulate the poverty reduction impacts of a selection of medium-to-long-term social grant options with the goal of replacing the existing special COVID-19...
This study explores the relationship between household poverty and depth of informality by proposing a new measure of informality at the household level. It is defined as the share of activities (hours worked or income earned) without social...
How social protection programmes affect work choices is a question that has been at the centre of labour economics research for decades. More recently, a scant literature has focused on the effects of social protection on work choices and informal...
This paper explores the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa on income poverty and inequality in South Africa. Using a static tax–benefit microsimulation model with input datasets that were adjusted to reflect people’s...
Sri Lanka, like the Nordic countries, is a social democratic nation with a strong welfare state. It is classified as a ‘high human development’...
How can we ensure a resilient and inclusive recovery from COVID-19? How can we hold on to the target of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030, with...
This paper assesses the effects on poverty and inequality of the alternative targeting approaches that Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer programme could take as its expansion continues during the period of the country’s Seventh National Development Plan...
How do shifts in trade affect social protections for the poor? Although the fraction of the world's population considered the “extreme” poor has fallen by over one-half over the past quarter century, many of those lifted above the global poverty line...
Part of Journal Special Issue SOUTHMOD: Modelling Tax-benefit Systems in Developing Countries
In the late 1970s, China embarked on a major programme of economic transition and reform. Since then, China’s economy has been transformed from a socialist planned economy to a predominately market economy characterized by a combination of state...
This paper considers the implications of COVID-19 relief measures for the building and extension of comprehensive and universal social protection systems. It highlights three key areas emerging from the crisis, which are likely to affect the shape of...
This study evaluates which type of benefit—a universal benefit, a proxy mean-tested benefit, or a categorical benefit— better cushions the poverty effects of income shocks in a developing economy. We compare the effectiveness of the three benefit...
This paper analyses the effectiveness of tax-benefit systems in reducing poverty and inequality across 13 countries in the Global South. Using national survey data and tax-benefit microsimulation models from the SOUTHMOD project, we provide a cross...
This study conducts an international comparative analysis of the recent evolution of social protection systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions, paying particular attention to the...
About three years have passed since the South African government introduced the COVID-19 Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) in response...
This paper examines a broad range of opportunities for addressing the pressing human development needs of low-income countries by using new oil, gas, and mineral discoveries. It assesses how much of an impact can be made on the funding gaps for...
Four years ago, in 2014, Juan Villa spent three months at UNU-WIDER in our PhD Fellowship Programme. I spoke to him on a sunny September afternoon...
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...
A large informal sector is a challenge for developing countries building up social protection systems. Expanding social safety nets reduces poverty, but financing them can increase the tax burden, potentially reducing availability of formal sector...
Part of Book The Politics of Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa
Part of Book The Politics of Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa
This paper presents an analysis of the recent evolution of social assistance in the developing world, looking at its complex typological configuration, which has interlinked with, and partly reflects the complex demographic and epidemiological...
This paper studies how household-level receipts of cash transfers affect political attitudes in Pakistan. The paper exploits the locally exogenous eligibility cut-off of the flagship Benazir Income Support Programme to estimate causal effects. The...
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