In this paper we examine the mathematical relationship between growth and distributional change on absolute (i.e. percentage point) changes in FGT poverty measures assuming a log-normal income distribution, which we argue to be a conceptually superior and more policy-relevant measure than the...

This paper discusses two recent controversies surrounding levels and trends in the number of ‘missing women’ in the world. First, the impact of fertility decline on gender bias in mortality is examined. Contrary to the expectations of some authors, fertility decline has not generally led to...

Households in developing countries are frequently hit by severe idiosyncratic and covariate shocks resulting in high consumption volatility. A household’s currently observed poverty status might therefore not be a good indicator of the household’s general poverty risk, or in other words its...

It has recently been argued that the informal sector of labor markets in de- veloping economies shows a dual structure with part of the informal sector being competitive to the formal sector and part of the informal sector being the result of market segmentation. To test this hypothesis, we...

In this paper we analyze the world´s cross-national distribution of income and its evolution from 1970 to 2003. We argue that modeling this distribution by a finite mixture and investigating its number of components has advantages over nonparametric inference concerning the number of modes. In...

One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. We suggest a relatively easy and intuitive approach which allows to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution....

Children living in HIV/AIDS affected households bear the heaviest burden of the epidemic. Besides direct vertical transmission, HIV/ AIDS potentially worsens the children’s welfare indirectly through its socio-economic impact. This paper uses household survey data including information about...

This paper examines the relationship between measures of income poverty, undernourishment, childhood undernutrition, and child mortality in developing countries. While there is, as expected, a close aggregate correlation between these measures of deprivation, the measures generate some...

We examine the impact of financial development on earnings inequality in Brazil in the 1980s and first half of the 1990s. The evidence– based on panel-time series data and analysis–shows that financial development had a significant and robust effect in reducing inequality during the period....

This paper aims to analyse the effect of trade facilitation on sectoral trade flows. We use data from the World Bank’s Doing Business Database on the fees associated with completing the procedures to export or import goods in a country, on the number of documents needed and on the required...