Financial inclusion is a key element of social inclusion, particularly useful in combat-ing poverty and income inequality by opening blocked advancement opportunities for disadvantaged segments of the population. This study intends to investigate the impact of financial inclusion on reducing...

This special section aims to advance scholarship on well-being and happiness in Africa. The section covers theoretical, conceptual and empirical contributions which address relevant areas that enhance extant knowledge on linkages between poverty, happiness and well-being in Africa.

Several studies report large and persistent differences in standards of living and poverty within a country. In this paper, we study whether the observed differences in poverty incidence in urban areas are due to differences in the attributes of the population that lives in these zones or comes...

The political consequences of economic inequality have been debated in academic and policy circles for centuries. The nature of this relationship seems highly dependent on specific contexts, with empirical studies showing mixed evidence on how economic inequality affects voting and other forms...

The paper discusses the main issues related to negative and zero incomes that are relevant for the measurement of poverty. It shows the prevalence of non-positive incomes in high- and middle-income countries, provides an analysis of the sources and structure of these incomes, outlines the...

This paper uses household surveys from 13 developing countries to describe consumption choices, health and education investments, employment patterns and other features of the of the economic lives of the middle classes defined as those whose daily consumption per capita is between $2 and $4 or...

This paper asks where do the world’s multidimensionally poor people live? The paper considers how the global distribution of multidimensional poverty differs from the global distribution of income poverty and assesses the sensitivity of findings to widely used (although somewhat arbitrary)...

While undernutrition among children is very pervasive both in Sub- Saharan Africa and South Asia, child mortality is rather low in South Asia. In contrast to that Sub-Saharan African countries su er by far the worst from high rates of child mortality. This di erent pattern of child mortality and...

The literature on the economics of happiness in the developed economies finds discrepancies between reported measures of wellbeing and income measures. The ‘Easterlin paradox’, for example, shows that average happiness levels do not increase as countries grow wealthier. This article explores...

This paper econometrically examines the impact of aid on the well-being of population sub-groups within 48 developing countries. This is a radical departure from previous empirical research of aid effectiveness at the country level, which has looked mainly at the relationship between aid and...