This paper examines the impact of energy poverty on subjective well-being in Germany using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) over the period 2010-2023. Exploiting within-individual variation, we estimate fixed-effects models using objective, subjective, and composite...

In South Korea, nearly 40% of the elderly population lives in poverty, one of the highest rates in the developed world. As the country undergoes a rapid demographic transition and the share of older individuals increases, understanding the drivers of old-age poverty becomes increasingly...

This study documents substantial heterogeneity in returns to education by childhood poverty status among Indonesian wage workers aged 15-35. Individuals who grew up poor earn only 1.5 percent per additional year of schooling-less than onefourth of the 6.8 percent earned by those who were never...

Disasters due to natural hazards pose a significant threat to people’s well-being and increase the risk of poverty, particularly in vulnerable populations. This paper provides a novel global estimate of poverty due to disasters, showing that 25.6 million people are at risk of poverty due to...

Economic research on time use has traditionally focused on the total time individuals spend across different activities. However, less is known about time-use agency, or the ability to make strategic choices on allocating one’s time. This paper presents the findings from a novel,...

This 2025 Poverty and Equity Assessment examines Bangladesh’s progress in poverty reduction and inclusive development from 2010 to 2022. Poverty in Bangladesh declined between 2010 and 2022, but the pace of progress slowed after 2016, and over one-third of the population remained vulnerable to...

Ceremonies are central to social life, yet the pressure to conform to community spending norms traps households in a collectively suboptimal equilibrium, imposing severe financial burdens. Using nationally and regionally representative longitudinal data from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, we...

Reducing poverty is a central policy priority in many countries, also in wealthy countries with comprehensive universal support systems, such as the Nordic welfare states. This study examines policy options designed to support families with preschool-aged children and their implications for...

The issues of income inequality and poverty are intrinsically linked and represent persistent global governance challenges. China faced significant hurdles, including absolute rural poverty and a widening urban-rural development gap. The "Targeted Poverty Alleviation" policy (TPA), implemented...

In fragile states such as the Central African Republic, where conflict and institutional fragility severely constrain traditional data collection, mapping multidimensional vulnerability and potential deprivation poses a significant challenge for designing targeted interventions. This paper...

Road infrastructure boosts economic opportunities and thus contributes to poverty alleviation. This paper investigates the causal impact of paved primary roads on poverty and income mobility in Ecuador, with particular attention to the mechanisms through which these effects materialize....

Land-use policies shape the spatial allocation of infrastructure, services, and development and thus have direct implications for welfare. This paper examines the effects of Colombia's municipal territorial plan updates on poverty through the lens of the housing and services channel. Using...

The government is in the process of conducting a review of universal credit (UC), the main means-tested benefit for working-age people, received by 6.3 million families at any one time. This report discusses some of the challenges UC faces, and outlines potential directions for reform.

The Welsh Government aims to increase employment and earnings as part of its 'Plan for Employability and Skills', and in order to help generate additional tax revenues that can help fund public services and investment. It also aims to reduce inequalities in employment and earnings, and has clear...

The Scottish Government aims to increase employment and earnings as part of its 'National Strategy for Economic Transformation' and in order to help generate additional tax revenues that can help fund public services and investment. It also has ambitious targets to significantly reduce poverty,...

Reliable statistics on the distribution of wealth - and how this has changed over time - are essential for informing a range of policy debates. Unfortunately, current official statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) do not provide a coherent or consistent guide to how wealth is...

The IFS Deaton Review has been a major interdisciplinary project studying the causes and consequences of inequalities. The Review has studied inequalities related to education, health, income, wealth, political power, geography, gender, ethnicity and social mobility. This report draws lessons...

Der Siebte Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht (7. ARB) ist ein umfangreiches, datenbasiertes Werk, das viele relevante Lebensbereiche abdeckt - von Einkommen und Vermögen über Bildung, Gesundheit und Teilhabe bis hin zu neuen Themen wie Klimawandel und subjektiven Erfahrungen von Armut. Gleichzeitig...

Der Siebte Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht (7. ARB) ist ein umfangreiches, datenbasiertes Werk, das viele relevante Lebensbereiche abdeckt - von Einkommen und Vermögen über Bildung, Gesundheit und Teilhabe bis hin zu neuen Themen wie Klimawandel und subjektiven Erfahrungen von Armut. Gleichzeitig...

The risk of a worker falling into unemployment represents one of the most important threats to the stability of households' finances - both in terms of lower spending (and hence living standards) and in terms of a greater degree of financial distress (such as the accumulation of unmanageable...

The haor (Ox-bow Lake) region in Bangladesh, comprising seven districts, is rich in fishing, biodiversity, and boro-rice cultivation. However, its people are poorer due to wet monsoon seasonality. This study evaluates the joint impact of microcredit facilities and social safety net programs...

Since the late 1980s, extreme poverty has declined sharply, life expectancy and schooling have increased, and electoral democracy has expanded. However poverty reduction has slowed in recent years, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, amid intensifying conflict, fragility, climate...

Understanding poverty and well-being requires moving beyond income-based measures to account for how work and time are organized within households. While income and unpaid work sustain household living standards, in combination with leisure they determine how these standards are produced and...

This working paper investigates the tension between market forces and welfare policies by applying Karl Polanyi's "double movement" study to pre- and posttransformation Poland. The analysis aims at providing a comprehensive perspective on how poverty relief policies impacted and have been...

We show that executives' early-life poverty experiences reduce both internal (executive-employee) and external (executive-peer) corporate pay disparities. Three mechanisms drive this effect: increased risk aversion in poverty-exposed executives, strategic avoidance of negative media coverage to...

Mini-grids are emerging as a key solution to electrify access-deficit communities, yet their effectiveness in improving energy access and household welfare remains underexplored. This paper provides novel evidence from Tanzania, where a policy reform doubled the number of mini-grids since 2008....

Which poverty context matters for long-term outcomes-family or community, economic or social? We construct a measure of poverty along these dimensions and analyze individual-level longitudinal data spanning 21 years in Indonesia to examine the long-term outcomes associated with different types...

Time poverty is a key yet conceptually contested dimension of household living standards. Both univariate and bivariate measures remain debated because there is no clear consensus on how to define and quantify socially necessary unpaid work, the time that money cannot substitute for, across...