Carlos Gradín shares project findings at JICA-IPD Employment Task Force meeting at Columbia University

UNU-WIDER Research Fellow Carlos Gradín is invited to speak at the JICA-IPD Employment Task Force meeting convened by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University (IPD). Carlos will present a summary of the findings from UNU-WIDER's project on the Changing nature of work and inequality (CNWI) to the expert task force convened by the esteemed economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz.

The UNU-WIDER project, which convened 11 country teams and a global study team to analyze the links between employment, inequality, and technological change in Global South labour markets, is expected to produce a forthcoming volume. Carlos presents the main conclusions of the summary chapter and the key details from the country studies.

Collectively, the project's findings assess the hypothesis that there are generalized links between the routinization of employment and wage polarization. As might be expected, the country-level findings, which measure earnings inequality, routine task intensity, and occupational structure, show a much more textured, complicated, and heterogeneous picture emerging across the developing nations of the Global South.  

This event is by invitation only. 

About 
The Employment Task Force aims at discussing the employment situation in the Global South, to improve our knowledge of how these labour markets work, what the main challenges are, and/or what policies are needed. In this line, the CNWI project offers a unique perspective of a cross-country comparison of countries representing the different developing regions and following different development paths, using an innovative approach that combines the more conventional explanations of labour market inequality (based on the role of the education premium) with the less well-studied role of changes in the routine-task-intensity of jobs and how they are remunerated in the labour market.

Although this perspective is used more frequently, to date, in advanced economies, the CNWI project offers some of the first evidence for developing countries.