Measured by the Gini coefficient, income inequality in Brazil rose from 0.57 in 1981 to 0.63 in 1989, before falling back to 0.56 in 2004. This latest figure would lower Brazil's world inequality rank from 2nd (in 1989) to 10th (in 2004). Poverty incidence also followed an inverted U-curve over...

The author critically reviews the methods available for the ex-post counterfactual analysis of programs that are assigned exclusively to individuals, households, or locations. The discussion covers both experimental and non-experimental methods (including propensity-score matching, discontinuity...

Standard economic analyses suggests that when the budget for redistribution is fixed, transfers should be targeted to (that is, means-tested for) those most in need. But both economists and political scientists have long recognized the possibility that targeting could undermine political support...

Latin America is together with Sub-Saharan Africa the most unequal region of the world. This paper documents recent inequality trends in the Latin American region, going beyond traditional measures of income inequality. The paper also reviews some of the explanations that have been put forward...

The author provides two extensions to Yitzhaki and Lerman's group decomposition of the Gini index. First, he analyzes stratification (within the group) and inequality (between groups) along several dimensions at once. This makes the determinants of inequality more understandable. Second, he...

Differing value judgments in measuring inequality underlie the conflicting factual claims about how much poor people have shared in the economic gains from globalization. Opponents in the debate differ in the extent to which they care about relative inequality versus absolute inequality,...

The author empirically explores the distributional impactof social transfers in cash and in-kind in Russia and Eastern Europe. He shows that cash transfers, on the whole, are distributed almost uniformly (equally per capita) regardless of one's position in income distribution. By contrast, in...

Is a pro-growth strategy always the best pro-poor strategy? To address this issue, the author provides an empirical evaluation of the impact of a series of pro-growth policies on inequality and headcount poverty. He relies on a large macroeconomic data set and estimate dynamic panel models that...

Important differences exist between communities with respect to their needs, capacities, and circumstances. As central governments are not able to discern these differences fully, they seek to achieve their policy objectives by relying on decentralized mechanisms that use local information....

During Russia's economic transition real income declined precipitously for most of the population. How were Russians'perceptions of the minimum income level needed to survive affected by such a rapid decline in their incomes? Based on data collected from repeated surveys of individuals during...