Drawing on a compilation of data from household surveys representing 130 countries, many over a period of 25 years, this paper reviews the evidence on levels and recent trends in global poverty and income inequality. It documents the negative correlations between both poverty and inequality...

What part of the inequality observed in a particular country is due to unequal opportunities, rather than to differences in individual efforts or luck? This paper estimates a lower bound for the opportunity share of inequality in labor earnings, household income per capita and household...

This paper provides evidence consistent with elite capture of Social Fund investment projects in Ecuador. Exploiting a unique combination of data-sets on village-level income distributions, Social Fund project administration, and province level electoral results, the authors test a simple model...

Achieving fiscal consolidation without undermining growth and poverty-reduction efforts is a key policy challenge in many countries. Using India as an illustration, this paper shows how a mix of well-designed taxation and spending policies can help address these challenges. On the tax side, the...

This paper reviews income distribution in developing (and transition) countries in recent decades. On average, before-tax income distribution in developing countries is less unequal than in industrial countries. However, unlike industrial countries, developing countries in general have not been...

This paper demonstrates that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty by reducing economic growth, the progressivity of the tax system, the level and effectiveness of social spending, and the formation of human capital, and by perpetuating an unequal distribution of...