The emergence of China as a global player challenges the pre-existing dominance of the OECD countries and will continue to be a crucial force for global change in coming decades. The implications of China’s rise will be most significant for low- and middle-income countries, but the outcomes...

Social pensions are expanding in rapidly ageing Asia as a means to protect older persons from poverty and social exclusion. Although social pensions are widely viewed as useful instruments to reduce old-age poverty and to include those traditionally excluded from contributory pension insurance,...

Current global discussions over the content of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda provide a critical space for reflection on the future contours of development assistance, and an opportunity to rethink the social dimensions of the transformation to sustainable development. There is...

Growth alone does not guarantee sustained poverty reduction, and it may also create threats to social cohesion that in turn can undermine growth. While development thinking remains dominated by a 'growth-first' paradigm, Asian experience helps to moderate this view, illustrating the important...

Asset-poor rural households increase their incomes primarily through the transfer of labour into activities which yield higher returns. This paper examines the determinants of job status among members of rural households in China's transitional economy. The objective is to gain a better...

Any transition to a sustainable and equitable ‘green economy’ will require restructuring patterns of production, consumption and distribution and finding innovative development ‘alternatives’ to achieve justice on a global scale. Social dimensions – including social and distributive...

This study investigates whether the concept of surplus labour adequately characterises the labour conditions facing rural Chinese households, and the implications of such a surplus for household labour allocation. Using household survey data from one county in north China, we first estimate the...