This paper has two main objectives. First, it assesses and measures the gaps in the stock of human capital across the world. It presents how effectively different regions are improving their stock of human capital, and how long it will take for developing countries to catch up with the current...

There are significant income and nonincome development gaps around the world. Closing these gaps will require not only increasing and sustaining economic growth in low-income regions, but also policies that close nonincome development gaps directly. Governments need to support private investment...

Following independence from the former Soviet Union, Tajikistan inherited an extensive social protection system that included a range of cash and noncash benefits. While the economy is well into its transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy, its social welfare policies...

Measuring the equity of opportunity in a given society is an essential ingredient in the formulation of policies and programs that promote inclusive growth. In this paper, equity of opportunity is defined and measured through the theoretical framework of the social opportunity function, a...

Human capital refers to the ability and efficiency of people to transform raw materials and capital into goods and services, the consensus being that these skills can be learned through the educational system. The concept of human capital, necessarily, is related to the productivity of workers....

Aggregating per capita gross domestic product growth across countries has always been a technical problem due to complexities in the relative movements of exchange rates, economic output, and populations. As such, the conventional approach to aggregating growth across countries suffers from...

The distributional impacts of fiscal policies are instrumental in reducing inequality in countries like the Philippines, where inequality has been persistently high. This paper assesses how equitable various taxes and transfers in the Philippines are by deriving the elasticities of Atkinson and...

Equity is an abstract concept covering philosophical issues such as fairness and social justice, making its definition and measurement very complex. This study attempts to define and measure equity in health status and health care utilization using the equity index of opportunity. The study...

This paper compares achievements and inequities in standards of living across countries. Achievement is measured by an index, which is constructed to reflect greater achievement for an increase in the standard of living of a country that is already at a high level compared to that of another...