The United Nations Millennium Declaration commits to halving extreme poverty between 2000 and 2015. The South African government has set a goal of halving poverty by 2014, although the meaning of this goal has not yet been defined. This article specifies government.s stated target of halving...

The present study examines the degree to which income distribution affects the ability of economic growth to reduce poverty, based on 1990s data for a sample of rural and urban sectors of African economies. Using the basic needs approach, an analysis-ofcovariance model is derived and estimated,...

This paper examines the distribution of top incomes in 15 former British colonies in Africa, drawing on evidence available from income tax records. It seeks to throw light on the position of colonial elites during the period of British rule. Just how uneq

A recent trend in the study of poverty is to consider a relative poverty line, one that is responsive to the nature of the income distribution. We develop an axiomatic approach to the determination of an amalgam poverty line. Given a reference income (e.g. the mean or the median), the amalgam...

This paper evaluates the impact of education on measured inequality across the wage distribution using pooled records from the 2005 and 2010 Cameroon labour force surveys, wage equations and standard inequality measures. Returns to education increased monotonically. Yet incremental returns were...

We introduce two separate datasets.the Global Consumption Dataset and the Global Income Dataset.containing an unprecedented portrait of consumption and income of persons over time, within and across countries, around the world. The benchmark version of the dataset presents estimates in...

A key aspect defining the contemporary income distribution is the (increasing) share the top holds compared to the rest. This paper shows that income concentration increases towards the very top of the distribution, while the shares the middle- and upper-middle-income groups hold, remain stable...

Since the 1970s, Chile has exhibited a highly skewed income distribution accompanied with strong fluctuations over time. Although income distribution worsened notably in the 1970s-80s, a significant improvement was recorded in the first half of the 1990s, resulting from better economic and...

Based on the standard axiom of individual utility maximization, rational choice has postulated that higher income inequality translates into greater redistribution by shaping the median voter?s preferences. While numerous papers have tested this propositi

South Africa is considering introducing carbon taxes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We evaluate potential impacts using a dynamic economy-wide model linked to an energy sector model. Simulation results indicate that a phased-in carbon tax that reache