Using SAMOD, a tax-benefit microsimulation model for South Africa, this paper examines the joint distributional impact of the increase in the value-added tax (VAT) rate and increases in benefit amounts in 2018. Although poverty and inequality did not increase overall, the poorest still saw a...

This paper analyses the impacts of indirect tax policy reforms on income distribution and poverty in Tanzania by applying a standard static microsimulation model TAZMOD v1.8. The simulations model two indirect tax reforms involving changes to the excise duty and value-added tax rates on...

Longitudinal surveys can give insight into economic mobility, which allows us to understand how markers of (dis)advantage are consequential in determining material conditions in the present, and how these markers structure economic opportunity over time. In this paper we show that this dynamic...

A key way for the world's poor - nearly half of humanity - to escape poverty is to earn more for their labor. Most of the world's poor people are self-employed, but because there are few opportunities in most developing countries for them to earn enough to escape poverty, they are working hard...

This paper studies the pro-poor bias of contemporary trade policy in India by estimating the household welfare effects of eliminating the current protection structure. The elimination of a pro-poor trade policy is expected to have lower welfare gains or higher welfare loss at the low end of the...

While political dynamics differ greatly from one place to another, rural areas continue to have legitimate grievances. Poverty in rural areas is both more prevalent and more acute than in urban areas - about 80 per cent of the world's extremely poor people live in rural areas.

Expanding childcare is often considered as a suitable way to enhance employment opportunities of mothers with young children as well as to reduce child poverty. In this study the authors critically investigate this assertion by simulating a set of scenarios of increasing subsidized childcare...

Despite record economic growth in the decade that followed the fall of the Taliban regime, poverty remained stubbornly high in Afghanistan, and especially so in regions that suffered less from conflict. This paper aims to explain this puzzle by combining a model of conflict intensity at the...

Research on neighbourhood effects indicates that neighbourhood poverty is related to educational outcomes of youth, however, much less attention is spend on studying neighbourhood and school effects simultaneously. Because the demographic composition of both contexts likely overlaps to some...

This open access book examines India's economic development, agricultural production, and nutrition through the lens of a "Food Systems Approach (FSA)." Despite economic progress, regional inequality, food insecurity and malnutrition persist. Simultaneously, recent trends in obesity and...

This paper presents baseline results from the latest version of EUROMOD (version I1.0+), the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the EU. First, we briefly report the process of updating EUROMOD. We then present indicators for income inequality and risk of poverty using EUROMOD and discuss the...

This papers quantifies the redistributive effects on progressivity, poverty and welfare, that would occur if the monetary benefits currently in place in the Spanish system were to be replaced by a neutral alternative in terms of spending, granting a universal basic income (UBI) to everyone. We...

This paper looks at the effects of tax-benefit systems and social stratification determinants on the probability of poverty among mothers after childbirth and divorce/separation. The analysis was carried out for twelve EU countries, which represent a variety of welfare regimes providing...

The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of human rights on income distribution and poverty by exploring how both aid and trade can influence poverty and income distribution through human rights. The analysis employs data for 125 countries and uses a number of panel data methods. The...

The economic mobility of individuals and households is of fundamental interest. While many measures of economic mobility exist, reliance on transition matrices remains pervasive due to simplicity and ease of interpretation. However, estimation of transition matrices is complicated by the...

We examine the phenomenon of forsaken schooling resulting from opportunities abroad. The brain-drain/gain literature takes as its starting point the migration of educated/professional labor from poor origin countries to richer host countries. While high-skilled migration is worrisome, many...

Financial protection is claimed to be an important objective of health policy. Yet there is a lack of clarity about what it is and no consensus on how to measure it. I address the ambiguity of meaning by considering three questions: Protection of what? Protection against what? Protection with...

Redistributive systems in Africa are still in their infancy but are constantly expanding in order to finance increasing public spending. This paper aims at characterizing the redistributive potential of six African countries: Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and South Africa. These...

In 2008, Uganda granted hundreds of small groups $ 400 per person to help members start individual skilled trades. Four years on, an experimental evaluation found grants raised earnings by 38% (Blattman, Fiala, Martinez 2014). We return after 9 years to find these start-up grants raised earnings...

Peru has made great progress in reducing poverty and inequality in the past decade alongside high economic growth. Albeit this progress, the incidence of poverty and inequality remain high. This paper examines the distributional and poverty impact of the public tax and transfer system in Peru....

This paper contributes to the methodological literature on the estimation of international poverty lines for Latin America based on the official poverty lines chosen by the Latin American governments and commonly used in the public debate. The paper exploits a comprehensive data set of 86...

Evidence on the effectiveness of workfare as an anti-poverty program in developing countries is weak compared with the relatively well-established role of public works during economic crisis as a social safety net. This paper contributes to evidence building by examining the impact of a...

Between 1991 and 2015, the real disposable, needs-adjusted income of persons in private households in Germany rose by 15 percent on average. The majority of the population has benefited from the growth in real income, but the groups at the lower end of the income distribution have not....

The objective of this study was to examine the role of social security in fighting poverty in Metlaoui, Tunisia, using survey data collected between July 2012 and January 2014, covering 200 poor households. We used questionnaire data, which gave a thorough analysis of the reactions, behavior,...

Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (CCT) have been implemented in México and Latin America since the late 1990’s. This type of program focuses on providing social government services by way of direct cash transfers to poor families that are often conditioned to the use of public education and...

According to the Blacks’ Diminished Return theory, the health effects of high socioeconomic status (SES) are systemically smaller for Black compared to White families. One hypothesis is that due to the existing structural racism that encompasses residential segregation, low quality of...

This paper develops a new imputation methodology applied to missing incomes values in PNAD. PNAD is the main Brazilian household survey, but it has no imputation. The imputation process starts by fitting regression models applied to different income sources considering the complex sampling...

The reduction of poverty is at the heart of the development agenda both nationally and globally. This is reflected in the Philippine Development Plan, as well as in the worldwide commitment toward the Sustainable Development Goals. While the measurement of poverty is ex post and thus, public...

The aim of this research note is to analyse the distributional impact of five types of local social benefits (compensation for housing costs, old-age income supplement, grant for a newborn child, kindergarten subsidy and city transport subsidy) in the four major Croatian cities - Zagreb, Split,...

This paper is essentially autobiographical and describes Erik Thorbecke's journey through the history of development economics between the 1950s and the present. The paper consists of four parts. First, an introduction reviews briefly his professional career as a development economist and his...

There is increasing scholarly evidence that financialization has contributed to rising income inequality, especially by concentrating income among the affluent and rich. There is less empirical research examining who is losing out to the affluent. This paper fills this gap by examining how three...

As health care costs rise, so too does the importance of assessing their incidence, and factoring these costs into measures of post-government income distribution. This paper contributes to this assessment by calculating the effect of government policy on the distribution of income by adjusting...

Proponents of the income-based approach to poverty rarely contest the fact that poverty is actually a multidimensional phenomenon. What they claim is that economic resources provide a sufficiently precise proxy for whatever dimensions poverty might have. The indirect assumption is that all...

Accurately measuring government benefit receipt in household surveys is necessary when studying disadvantaged populations and the programs that serve them. The Food Stamp Program is especially important given its size and recent growth. To validate survey reports, we use administrative data on...

More than 40% of US grain is used for energy due to the Renewable Fuels Mandate (RFS). There are no studies of the global distributional consequences of this purely domestic policy. Using micro-level survey data, we trace the effect of the RFS on world food prices and their impact on household...

This chapter addresses the unrelenting pessimism in Asian Drama about Indonesia's development prospects. This pessimism was based on two key realities: the poor level of governance demonstrated by the Sukarno regime (partly a heritage of Dutch colonial policies) and the extreme poverty witnessed...

The story of South Asia is a topsy-turvy one. Soon after independence from British rule, the region seemed to have a much better prospect than many other parts of the Third World; the prospects soon dimmed, however, as South Asia crawled while East and Southeast Asia galloped away. But a large...

Rising poverty and inequality increases the risk of social instability in countries all around the world. For measuring poverty and inequality there exists a variety of statistical indicators. Estimating these indicators is trivial as long as the income variable is measured on a metric scale....

Rising income inequalities are widely debated in public and academic discourse. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by proposing a new family of measures of unfair inequality. To do so, we acknowledge that inequality is not bad per se, but that its underlying sources need to be taken...

This paper presents baseline results from the latest version of EUROMOD (version H1.0+), the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the EU. First, we briefly report the process of updating EUROMOD. We then present indicators for income inequality and risk of poverty using EUROMOD and discuss the...

Poverty declined substantially in Mozambique between 1996/97 and 2014/15. However, the recent economic crisis, characterized by a significant increase in domestic prices, may have dragged several households into poverty. Using consumer price index and 2014/15 household budged survey data, we...

Rising income inequalities are widely debated in public and academic discourse. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by proposing a new family of measures of unfair inequality. To do so, we acknowledge that inequality is not bad per se, but that its underlying sources need to be taken...

The study explored the impact of remittances on poverty in selected emerging markets. On the theoretical front, the optimistic view argued that remittances inflow into the labour exporting country reduces poverty whereas the pessimistic view proponents said that remittances dependence syndrome...

This paper uses a recent household survey and the CEQ framework to revisit and extend previous research on the impact of fiscal policy on income redistribution, and poverty in South Africa. We find, in accordance with previous research, that direct taxes and cash transfers are overall...

The purpose of the chapter is to analyze Africa's economic successes in the past half century, to understand not only what made it possible but also and more importantly what risk factors may eventually bring it to an end or compromise it. While it may not be possible for Africa to alter, for...

Raising the minimum wage in developing countries could increase or decrease poverty, depending on labor market characteristics. Minimum wages target formal sector workers - a minority in most developing countries - many of whom do not live in poor households. Whether raising minimum wages...

This paper considers the case for universal child allowances in Ghana. It follows findings from an earlier study of 14 middle income countries that examined optimal approaches to reduce child poverty using universal categorical child allowances. The paper describes the demographic profiles that...

The level of income can be directly inferred from the level of education, making education an important variable as a key determinant of better livelihoods and poverty alleviation. However, in most developing countries education is not accessible to all. In Ghana - although basic education is...