In a polarised and highly unequal country such as South Africa, it is unlikely that a definition of the middle class that is based on an income threshold will adequately capture the political and social meanings of being middle class. We therefore propose a multi-dimensional definition, rooted...

We estimate trends in global earnings dispersion across occupational groups using a new database covering 66 developed and developing countries between 1970 and 2015. Our main finding is that global earnings inequality has declined, primarily during the 2000s, when the global Gini coefficient...

Periods of rapid economic growth in developing countries have been well studied in terms of poverty and income inequality reduction, but much less is known about the performance of these countries in terms of economic mobility. We study intragenerational mobility in Peru using an asset-based...

Do populations grow as countries become richer? In this paper we estimate the effects on population growth of shocks to national income that are plausibly exogenous and unlikely to be driven by technological change. For a panel of over 139 countries spanning the period 1960-2007 we interact...

This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) - the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept - on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per capita...