Termination of pregnancy (TOP) or feticide for severe fetal anomalies is ethically and morally challenging and maybe considered illegal in countries with restrictive abortion laws. While diagnostic modalities such as fetal ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, and genetic screening have...

Protests come as a way to show disagreement on issues that concern the public or a group of people imposed on them by authorities in power. Government’s purpose is to regulate the country, and this however should be done with balance. There is an increase in the number of in protests in South...

This paper estimates the distribution of personal wealth in South Africa by combining tax microdata, household surveys, and macroeconomic balance sheet statistics. We systematically compare estimates of the wealth distribution obtained by direct measurement of net worth, rescaling of reported...

This paper investigates inequalities across the major black ethnic groups in South Africa, accounting for 80 per cent of the country's population. We demonstrate that there is an important ethnic gap in the poverty levels of the Xhosa and the Zulu with respect to the Sotho/Tswana. We also show...

This paper provides a summary of the findings contained in a forthcoming issue of the Latin American Journal of Economics on entrepreneurship in Latin America as a vehicle for upward social mobility, especially for the middle class. The income persistence coefficients estimated with pseudo-panel...

This study examines the impact of international economic sanctions, imposed on Iran due to its nuclear program, on the development of the middle class. Specifically, it investigates how the middle class in Iran would have developed in the absence of these sanctions post-2012. To address this...

This paper presents new evidence on the study of income mobility in Ecuador over the period 2004 - 11. We utilize longitudinal data of individual income tax returns to measure income mobility both at the top and at the middle of the income distribution, and we find three main empirical results....

Defining the 'global middle class' as being neither poor nor rich in the developed world, we estimate the size of the global middle class in China and 33 other countries and analyze China's expanding middle class in international perspective. China's global middle class has grown rapidly and has...

Defining the ‘global middle class’ as being neither poor nor rich in the developed world, we estimate the size of the global middle class in China and 33 other countries and analyze China’s expanding middle class in international perspective. China’s global middle class has grown rapidly...

In many developing countries, the supply of skilled workers is likely to continue to be stronger than demand, and this should drive down the skill premium and reduce inequality. Within the limitations of any exercise based on simulations, this paper finds that the recently observed reduction in...