Earlier research on poverty failed to provide us with consistent measures of its prevalence across space and time. This is due to the limitations of the available sources and to the difficulty of applying to them the poverty definitions of modern social science. This article discusses different...

Sub-Saharan Africa is home today to some of the most unequal countries in the world, in Southern and Central Africa, as well as others that are close to the world average, in Western Africa. Yet, there is no consensus regarding the historical factors that led to such a situation. Given limited...