A major of focus of global development policy is the aim to achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40% (B40) of the population at a rate higher than the national average. We propose an alternative approach to assessing shared prosperity using 'inequality lines'. Analogous to poverty...

Reducing poverty and inequality and promoting inclusive growth are fundamental to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Much has changed in the global economy in recent decades and perspectives on progress made vary widely. This is even more so in light of the ongoing...

We examine whether there is an inequality of opportunity to achieve higher education, partially explained by aspirations for youth age 12-15 in economically vulnerable households. Using a unique Canadian dataset (2002-2008), we find that poverty is associated with reduced university aspirations...

We analyse the effect of varying equivalization scales and income-sharing units (households, tax-units and benefit-units) on inequality and poverty statistics using Irish microdata. We find that benchmark equivalence scales result in substantial variation in the degree of income poverty...

We investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on income levels, poverty, and inequality in both the immediate aftermath and during the uneven recovery until December 2021 using high-frequency household survey data from India. We find that the average household incomes dropped sharply during...

This paper analyses the work of the Nobel Prize winning economist ProfessorAmartya Sen from the perspective of human rights. It assesses the ways inwhich Sen’s research agenda has deepened and expanded human rightsdiscourse in the disciplines of ethics and economics, and examines how hiswork...

Aphorisms that "Rising tides raise all boats" or that material advances of the rich eventually "Trickle Down" to the poor are really maxims regarding the nature of stochastic processes that underlay the income/wellbeing paths of groups of individuals. This paper looks at the implications for the...

Aphorisms that 'rising tides raise all boats' or that material advances of the rich eventually 'trickle down' to the poor are really maxims regarding the nature of stochastic processes that underlay the income/wellbeing paths of groups of individuals. This paper looks at the implications for the...

This paper reviews the pattern of poverty rates and income inequality in El Salvador since the 1990s. It discusses some of the likely factors that explain the reduction in income inequality that has taken place in the country in the last decade, which paradoxically has coincided with the long...

The majority of the world's poor, by income poverty and multi-dimensional poverty, now live in countries officially classified by the World Bank as middle-income countries. Of course nothing happens when a country crosses a (somewhat) arbitrary threshold in per capita income but it does matter...