SOUTHMOD presented at the IAB seminar series

The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) is hosting an online seminar series "Corona - leveler or amplifier of social and economic inequality?". The weekly seminar series aims to bring together empirically rigorous contributions from the fields of sociology, economics and related fields on issues of social policy, social and economic inequality following the Corona crisis.

UNU-WIDER Research Associate Jesse Lastunen will be giving a presentation on the seminar series on 19 May. He will present the ongoing research on COVID-19 undertaken by the SOUTHMOD team at UNU-WIDER in collaboration with SASPRI and the University of Essex. His presentation is titled 'To the rescue? The mitigating role of tax and benefit rescue packages for poverty and inequality in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic'.

The presentations are part of the UNU-WIDER project SOUTHMOD - simulating tax and benefit policies for development. Tax-benefit microsimulation models provide knowledge for better policy-making and inclusive development. With the models the effects of different policy scenarios on poverty, inequality, and government revenues can be analysed and compared.

SOUTHMOD project is part of UNU-WIDER's research and capacity building programme on domestic revenue mobilization (DRM), funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (Norad).