This paper begins by noting that Uganda has been a public sector reform leader in Africa. It has pursued reforms actively and consistently for three decades now, and has produced many laws, processes and structures that are 'best in class' in Africa (and beyond). The problem is that many of the...

In this paper, we use the World Income Inequality Database to assess the main trends in inequality within countries since around 1990. We cope with the heterogeneity in the original information (regarding the measure of resources, equivalence scale, etc.) by focusing on the trends rather than on...

We analyse income and expenditure distribution in China in a comparative perspective with India. These countries represent extreme cases in the relationship of inequality to both wellbeing indicators. Income is more highly concentrated than expenditure in India, especially at the top of the...

This paper provides a broad picture of national, regional and global trends of inequality in length of life over the period 1950-2015. We use data on life tables from World Population Prospects to develop a comprehensive database of a battery of inequality measures for 201 countries at five-year...

In this paper, I quantify the contribution of a subpopulation to inequality. This is defined as the sum of the contributions of its members, with these contributions computed as the impact on inequality of a small increase in the population mass at each point of the distribution (using the...

Students' expectations about their future wages are established in the literature as relevant determinants of the choices made for education progression and, at the university level, for the area and course to be studied. In this paper, the first comparable analysis in sub-Saharan Africa, we...

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...

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...

In this paper we reassess the relationship between inequality and human development, focusing on the differential effect associated with the concentration of national income at different parts of the income distribution. To do so, we rely on a large global panel of countries over the last...

Governments can play great roles in their countries, regions, and cities; facilitating or leading the resolution of festering problems and opening new pathways for progress. Examples are more numerous than one might imagine and raise an important question: 'how do governments become great?'....