The degree of choice households have over their consumption expenditure is critical in deciding their economic class. Applying our measure to Egyptian household budget surveys, we estimate the population size of the middle class in Egypt and assess their well-being in the period 1995-2011. Our...

Limited attention has been paid to how well social mobility measures debated and used to study industrial countries perform in analysis of low-income settings. Following brief, selective reviews of the axiomatic and econometric literatures, three mobility concepts illustrate how properties that...

This paper discusses current methods for measuring and analysing occupational mobility, and the way in which methods designed for the analysis of developing countries may need to be modified when applied in other contexts. The paper discusses particular features of some developing societies,...

This study explores the relationship between household poverty and depth of informality by proposing a new measure of informality at the household level. It is defined as the share of activities (hours worked or income earned) without social insurance for wage workers in the household. We apply...

This paper seeks to understand whether the way in which inequality is communicated through measurements influences individuals' fairness perceptions regarding wealth inequality. It begins from the premise that prominent measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient, fall short of...

This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico's Oportunidades programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via a bank account is found to have implications in terms of reallocation between...

Although Tanzania has made notable progress in enhancing access to financial services, the gender gap in financial inclusion persists. This paper examines gender disparities in financial inclusion in Tanzania using descriptive and regression analyses. While the advent of mobile phone money...

Using a nationally representative household survey data set from Ghana, this paper provides empirical evidence regarding the role of financial inclusion or financial exclusion in household welfare. We first compute a multidimensional index of financial inclusion, and then we examine the effect...

The mobile money transfer industry has been the most successful information and communications technology-enabled service in Kenya, having recorded an exponential growth relative to its neighbours within the East Africa region. This could be attributed to Kenya's status as a leading commercial...