Filter by...
Reset all
Publications (128)
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Experimental evidence from Mozambique
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This study examines the impact of digital labor-market platforms on jobs outcomes using a randomized encouragement design embedded in a longitudinal survey of Mozambican technical-vocational college graduates. We differentiate between platforms targeting formal jobs...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– National labour surveys in five Latin American countries and field research in 11 cities around the world
From the book:
COVID-19 and the Informal Economy
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Degrees and Pathways of Impact in 11 Cities around the World
From the book:
COVID-19 and the Informal Economy
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– COVID-19 and the Informal Sector
From the book:
COVID-19 and the Informal Economy
– Impact, Recovery and the Future
A key challenge for the post-COVID global economy is whether the disproportionate impact of the crisis on informal workers, who form the majority of the world’s workforce, will be acknowledged. Or whether harmful and negative stereotypes will persist.Today, despite the role of these essential...
Working Paper
pdf
– Indonesia and India compared
We examine the nature of labour market inequality in Indonesia and India, using a common conceptual approach drawing from the job ladder framework. In the framework, we differentiate between self-employment and wage-informal and between formal, upper tier informal, and lower tier informal jobs. We...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
We explore the relationship between household welfare and informality, measuring household informality as the share of members’ activities (hours worked or income) without social insurance. We discretize these measures into four bins or portfolios and assess their influence on consumption, as a...
Working Paper
pdf
– Relative and absolute perspectives
This paper presents the first global and regional estimates of polarization and bipolarization spanning the period 1960–2020. The study relies on group data to implement a flexible parametric model to obtain the global income distribution and polarization estimates. The study introduces a battery of...
Working Paper
pdf
Monitoring health is key for identifying priorities in public health planning and improving healthcare services. Life expectancy has conventionally been regarded as a valuable indicator to compare the health status of different populations. However, this measure is simply the mean of the...
– The stumbling block to resilient growth and prosperity
When the question of creating good jobs and decent work in Africa arises, policymakers and development partners often focus on formalization. For decades, the discourse around informality has focused on how to transition informal workers to formal jobs. We have been considering formal and informal...
UNU-WIDER’s 6-week online course on delivering Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8) brings together recent research on the linkages between economic growth and decent work. Most of the evidence draws on recent UNU-WIDER publications, all of which are available to download for free. The course is...
Working Paper
pdf
– Findings from national labour surveys in five Latin American countries
This paper provides a comparative summary of recent national statistics from five Latin American countries on employment losses and gains during the peak COVID-19 years compared with pre-pandemic levels. As part of its work on the impact of the pandemic on informal workers, the Women in Informal...
Working Paper
pdf
– Lessons from relief for comprehensive social protection
This paper considers the implications of COVID-19 relief measures for the building and extension of comprehensive and universal social protection systems. It highlights three key areas emerging from the crisis, which are likely to affect the shape of social protection systems moving forward. These...
Working Paper
pdf
Throughout 2021, fiscal stimulus packages were introduced to jump-start the COVID-19 ‘post-pandemic’ economic recovery process. While calls for economic recovery packages that promise to ‘build back better’ have come from many directions, the under-allocation of recovery resources directed at...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper seeks to understand whether the way in which inequality is communicated through measurements influences individuals’ fairness perceptions regarding wealth inequality. It begins from the premise that prominent measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient, fall short of providing an...
Journal Article
– Examples from rational choice theory and behavioural economics
Using illustrations from research on inequality, this essay makes a case for ‘behavioural synthesis’, that is the reconciliation between neo-classical and behavioural economics. Focusing on selected theories of absolute and relative inequality, we first give a brief critique of utilitarian models...
Working Paper
pdf
– The sub-Saharan experience
COVID-19 cases were first confirmed in March 2020 in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. These countries put in place several stringent measures, including lockdowns, to contain the spread of the virus. Various policies were also rolled out to address the disruption in economic activities, to mitigate...
Working Paper
pdf
– A k-means approach
This paper employs k-means clustering, a multidimensional pattern recognition method, to categorize countries using information from five Varieties of Democracy indices. K-means country clusters are similar but not entirely identical to both k-medians clusters and arbitrary groups formed using only...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Livelihoods and wellbeing in India during COVID-19
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This article studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in Delhi, India. First, the study finds that men’s employment declined by 84 percentage points during the pandemic...
Book Chapter
What is the relationship between inequality and growth? This question has occupied and fascinated social scientists for more than a century. This chapter critically reviews the recent empirical and theoretical literature on the complex interplay between inequality and economic growth. Inequality...
Book Chapter
– Trends, policies, and controversies
Reducing poverty and inequality and promoting inclusive growth are fundamental to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), approved by the UN General Assembly in September 2015. The first target of SDG1 is to eradicate extreme poverty, while SDG10 focuses on reducing inequality within...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Evidence from Ghana
In this study, we provide causal evidence of the immediate and near-term impact of stringent COVID-19 lockdown policies on employment outcomes, using Ghana as a case study. We take advantage of a specific policy setting, in which strict stay-at-home orders were issued and enforced in two spatially...
Research on how income inequality affects borrowing behaviour reignited after the 2008 global recession. One prevailing theory is that rising income inequality in the US and other high-income economies eroded real household incomes and prompted more and more borrowing. This growing debt culminated...
Many countries today experience increasing or persistent income inequality, a major concern for citizens and politicians alike. This concern is justified; as some individuals get richer, most people’s real incomes stagnate. Widening income inequality brings challenges to a nation’s development...
Working Paper
pdf
– Examining worker flows during normal and recessionary periods in South Africa
This paper examines employment transitions in the South African labour market. Using the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series, it analyses flows between the formal sector, informal sector, and unemployment, paying specific attention to how these flows differ during recessions. It explicitly considers...
From the book:
The Job Ladder
From the book:
The Job Ladder
– A clearer picture of informal work
Most workers in developing countries work in the informal labour market Lower-tier informal work leads to a dead end in the countries in this study, with little opportunity to move up the job ladder While those in upper-tier informal work are the most likely to transition to formal labour market...
Working Paper
pdf
– Examining the impact of relative income on formal and informal debt in South Africa
How does income inequality impact the propensity for and levels of formal and informal household debt? This paper assesses this question using the two most recent waves of the South African Living Conditions Survey. A range of linear models as well as a zero-inflated Poisson model are employed, and...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Chapter in book: Oxford Handbook of the Economy of Cameroon Cameroon’s informal labor market largely harbours female workers, engaged mainly in low-productivity and low-paying jobs. We investigate the sticky-floor - a wider earnings-gap at the top end of the earnings-distribution and glass-ceiling...
Displaying 32 of 128 results