The multidimensional view of human well-being has a growing influence on research on inequality and poverty. This development owes much to the conceptualisation of the “capability approach” by Sen (1985, 1987), but the shift has not been confined to academic circles and has extended to...

The inequality dataset compiled in the 1990s by the World Bank and extended by the UN has been both widely used and strongly criticized. The criticisms raise questions about conclusions drawn from secondary inequality datasets in general. We develop techniques to deal with national and...

The multidimensional view of human well-being has a growing influence on research on inequality and poverty. This development owes much to the conceptualisation of the “capability approach” by Sen (1985, 1987), but the shift has not been confined to academic circles and has extended to...

The paper deals with child labour in developing countries. We address a problem that has recently drawn much attention at the international level, that is, how to invest in women’s rights to advance the rights of both women and children. We study the problem from a new perspective. In our...

The 2007-09 Great Recession has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt in many countries, triggering substantial fiscal adjustments. What are the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity measures? This is an important policy question. This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal...

This annual progress report reviews the joint staff advisory note on Burkina Faso’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). IMF staff highlights the importance of increasing public revenue mobilization and strengthening expenditure management and efficiency, and securing financing in...

Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we document a significant and positive association between earnings risk (both permanent and transitory) and the level of earnings across 21 industries. We propose an equilibrium framework to analyze the interplay between earnings...

Deploying data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) we analyze the variability of individual earnings and equivalent household income. Permanent and transitory variances of male income over the period 1984-2008 are estimated for Old German Laender in order to determine their importance...

We examine patterns of earnings volatility for male employees who are subject to statutory social security contributions in West Germany over the period 1986 - 2005. For this purpose, we analyse individual records covering highly reliable earnings biographies provided by the German Social...

This paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross-sectional earnings inequality in Germany over the past three decades, while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices. Using rich micro data, the observed distribution of couples' earnings is compared to a counterfactual...