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February 2022

WIDER Webinar | Ashwini Deshpande and Janneke Pieters for International Women's Day

8 March 2022, 16:00-17:00, online

The gender gaps in pay and labour force participation are real and persistent worldwide. Women often occupy the worst-paid jobs with the least protection, while gender-related social norms often hinder women’s access to better opportunities. How do the processes of economic development and social change affect women’s labour market outcomes? What forces can bring about opportunities for women’s work that truly enhance their economic empowerment? And, what development agendas are most likely to improve gender equality and bring about the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 5?

Expert commentary on Ukraine

Blog

How will the Russia-Ukraine war be fought?
External support and insurgency tactics

by Kit Rickard

Blog

The conflict in Ukraine – the role of civilians

by Patricia Justino

Blog

Learning from conflicts past – what recent history of Abkhazia tells us about the future of Donetsk and Luhansk

by Anastasia Shesterinina

Blogs

Photo by Aleksandar Popovski on Unsplash

A fiercely contested omission — or why we need to keep talking about unpaid care

by Naila Kabeer

In the late 1950s, the United Nations System of National Accounts was set up to promote the collection of internationally comparable data on productive activity in different countries. The aim was to provide the basis for policy-making, including estimating the gross national product (GNP), the main measure of progress. However, unpaid care work, disproportionately carried out by women across the world, was not included — an omission that, despite fierce criticism, continues to the present day.

Why women are made to rely on vulnerable work

by Manuel Santos Silva, Maria C. Lo Bue, Tu Thi Ngoc Le, and Kunal Sen

The gender pay-gap is one of the foremost indicators of gender inequality and thus a guide for women’s economic empowerment policies. Although there is abundant data available on the phenomenon in OECD economies, this is not the case for the majority of developing countries, where most workers are self-employed and do not receive a regular wage, making it difficult to measure “pay gaps for similar work”.

A policy of longer maternity leave is not enough to protect women from disadvantage

by Tu Thi Ngoc Le

The length of maternity leave has direct impacts on critical gender equality outcomes such as women’s employment and lifetime earnings. However, there are different perspectives on the most appropriate duration of maternity leave and how it may impact these outcomes...

The COVID-19 crisis, informal workers, and gender — understanding the intersections

by Marty Chen

The COVID-19 crisis — the pandemic, restrictions, and recession — has not been a grand leveler. While all of us, rich and poor, faced the fear and uncertainty of the virus, the crisis has exposed and amplified pre-existing inequalities, injustices, and insecurities. Depending on their positionality and perspective, some observers focus on ...

Bride price or dowry?

by Milla Nyyssölä

Why is it that in some countries the parents of a bride pay dowry, whereas in some others the groom has to pay for the bride? What is the impact of different traditions on women’s lives?

News

New tax research collaboration and additional SOUTHMOD model for Rwanda

UNU-WIDER has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) to conduct research using national administrative tax data and develop a tax-benefit microsimulation model for Rwanda. The aim of the collaboration is to provide tools for researchers and policy makers to improve the tax and social protection system in Rwanda.

LDC Future Forum and UNU-WIDER research mentioned in several media outlets

UNU-WIDER was one of the organizers of the LDC Future Forum conference on Least Developed Countries in October 2021 in Helsinki, together with UN-OHRLLS and SDSN. During and after the conference UNU-WIDER research work related to LDCs was highlighted in the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat, on the website of the Finnish Foreign Ministry, and on the OECD Development Matters blog.

WIDER Working Paper Series

Working Paper

Whose intergenerational mobility? – a new set of estimates for Indonesia by gender, geography, and generation

by Diding Sakri, Andy Sumner, and Arief Anshory Yusuf

Working Paper

Women’s inheritance rights and time use – evidence from Hindu Succession Act in India

by Tanu Gupta

Working Paper

Improving young women’s working conditions in Tanzania’s urban food vending sector

by Nandera Ernest Mhando and Nasibu Rajabu Mramba

Working Paper

Revisiting the links between economic inequality and political violence – the role of social mobilization

by Patricia Justino

Working Paper

The legacies of armed conflict: insights from stayees and returning forced migrants

by Isabel Ruiz and Carlos Vargas-Silva

Working Paper

Aid's impact on democracy

by Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Ana Horigoshi, and Rachel M. Gisselquist

Working Paper

Dynamic impacts of lockdown on domestic violence – evidence from multiple policy shifts in Chile

by Sonia Bhalotra et al.

Working Paper

Maternal employment and children’s outcomes
Evidence from Indonesia

by Ervin Dervisevic, Maria C. Lo Bue, and Elizaveta Perova

Working Paper

The gender productivity gap – evidence from the Indian informal sector

by Ira N. Gang, Rajesh Raj Natarajan, Kunal Sen, and Myeong-Su Yun

Events

Original photo by Marc Schulte on Unsplash

Think WIDER Webinar | Ashwini Deshpande and Janneke Pieters on women’s work

8 March 2022, online

WIDER Seminar | Gaaitzen de Vries on industrialization in developing countries: is it related to poverty reduction?

9 March 2022, online

This paper proposes an empirical framework that relates poverty reduction to production growth. Using data from the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database and regression analysis, it demonstrates relationships between sectoral productivity growth, structural change, and poverty reduction across 42 countries.

WIDER Development Conference | The puzzle of peace – towards inclusive development in fragile contexts

16-17 May 2022, Helsinki, Finland

In 2022, UNU-WIDER hosts two WIDER Development Conferences, the first of which takes place in Helsinki on 16–17 May 2022. Across two days, sessions cover a range of topics on the themes of peace, security, unrest, and the humanitarian fallout of conflict in different regions of the world.

Think WIDER Webinar | K.A.S. Murshid on The Odds Revisited: Overcoming Underdevelopment - Lessons from the Bangladesh Journey

24 May 2022, online

K. A. S. Murshid joins WIDER Webinar Series to investigate ways to overcome vulnerabilities through the example of the Bangladesh development story. The webinar will be joined by Darlene K. Mutalemwa as a discussant.

Publications

Journal Article | Measuring global poverty before and during the pandemic – a political economy of overoptimism

by Andy Sumner, Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez, and Chris Hoy

ARTICLE ON EARLY VIEW | The contribution of this study is to question the ‘official’ estimates of global monetary poverty up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue there is a political economy of overoptimism in the measurement of global poverty.

Journal Article | On the impact of inequality on growth, human development, and governance

by Ines A Ferreira, Rachel M. Gisselquist, and Finn Tarp

OPEN ACCESS | Inequality is a major international development challenge. This is so from an ethical perspective and because greater inequality is perceived to be detrimental to key socioeconomic and political outcomes. Still, informed debate requires clear evidence.

Journal Article | Income distribution and the potential of redistributive systems in Africa
A decomposition approach

by Olivier Bargain. H Xavier Jara, Prudence Kwenda, and Miracle Ntuli

ARTICLE ON EARLY VIEW | Redistributive systems in Africa are still in their infancy but are expanding in order to finance increasing public spending. This study aims at characterising the redistributive potential of six African countries: Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Africa.

Journal Article | Multigenerational mobility among males in India

by Anustup Kundu and Kunal Sen

ARTICLE ON EARLY VIEW | Most studies of intergenerational mobility focus on adjacent generations, and there is limited knowledge about multigenerational mobility—status transmission across three generations. We examine multigenerational educational and occupational mobility in India, using a nationally representative data set the India Human Development Survey that contains information about education and occupation for three generations.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

Journal Article

Journal Article | Does connectivity reduce gender gaps in off-farm employment? Evidence from 12 low- and middle income countries
by Eva-Maria Egger, Aslihan Arslan, and Emanuele Zucchini

OPEN ACCESS | Gender gaps in labor force participation in developing countries persist despite income growth or structural change. We assess this persistence across economic geographies within countries, focusing on youth employment in off-farm wage jobs.

Journal Article

Rural financial intermediation and poverty reduction in Ghana – a micro-level analysis
by Michael Danquah et al.

ON EARLY VIEW | The financial sector in rural areas, where most of the poor people in sub-Saharan Africa are found, has transformed massively in recent times, notably through the increased penetration of several types of rural financial intermediaries in addition to rural and community banks and microfinance institutions.

Journal Article

Temperature shocks, rice production, and migration in Vietnamese households
by Adelaide Baronchelli and Roberto Ricciuti

OPEN ACCESS | This study analyses the relationship between temperature shocks and migration in rural households in Vietnam. To control for the potential endogeneity between crop production and migration we use monthly minimum temperatures in the growing season as an instrument of rice production.

Journal Article | Decomposing learning inequalities in East Africa – how much does sorting matter?

by Paul Anand, Jere R. Behrman, Hai‐Anh H. Dang, and Sam Jones

OPEN ACCESS | Inequalities in learning opportunities arise from both household- and school-related factors. Although these factors are unlikely to be independent, few studies have considered the extent to which sorting between schools and households might aggravate educational inequalities.

Journal Article | The role of automatic stabilizers and emergency tax–beneft policies during the COVID‑19 pandemic
Evidence from Ecuador

by H. Xavier Jara, Lourdes Montesdeoca, and Iva Tasseva

ON EARLY VIEW | By combining household survey data before and during the COVID-19 pandemic with detailed tax-benefit simulations, this paper quantifies the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax–benefit policies in mitigating the immediate impact of the economic shocks.

Journal Article | Digital Technologies and Product Upgrading in Global Value Chains –
Empirical Evidence from Indian Manufacturing Firms

by Karishma Banga

This article provides empirical evidence on the impact of digitalisation on product upgrading in global value chains (GVCs). Analysis is done for a sample of Indian manufacturing GVC firms in the period 2001–15 from the firm-level database Prowess, using the methodology of System Generalised Method of Moments.

Research Brief | Dynamics of domestic revenue mobilization – are moderate increases more sustainable?

Domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) — the generation of government revenue from domestic tax and non-tax resources — plays a crucial role in building an enduring financing architecture for sustainable development. This brief summarizes the dynamics of DRM trends across the past four decades.

Opportunities

Course | UNU-WIDER Winter School on tax policy research

UNU-WIDER is launching a Winter School on tax policy research. The aim of the course is to provide African researchers with an understanding of the theories, methods, and data availability for conducting high quality analysis on tax and development economics. The course will take place in two parts during the period 31 May - 16 July 2022. The deadline for applications is 18 March 2022 23:59 UTC+2.

Call for papers | WIDER Development Conference in partnership with UNIANDES: Reducing inequality – the great challenge of our time

The WIDER Development Conference organized in partnership with Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES) will take place in Bogotá, Colombia, on 5-7 October 2022. The three-day conference will bring together specialists from around the world to discuss the latest research on inequality in a broad sense, including inequalities that affect individuals or population groups across many dimensions of wellbeing (income, labour market outcomes, education, health, etc.). The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2022, 23:59 UTC+3

Request for Research Proposals | Detecting and countering illicit financial flows – second call

United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) together with the Development Economics Research Group at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH-DERG) invite proposals for papers examining the challenge of illicit financial flows. Proposals from individuals (or groups of individuals) as well as non-profit organizations are welcome. Submission deadline: 15 March 2022, 23:59 UTC+2.

Vacancy | People Operations Analyst (NOA)

UNU-WIDER is hiring a People Operations Analyst in Helsinki, Finland. As a People Operations Analyst, you would be part of our global HR team. Your responsibilities would include service design, service provision, supervision of local team, advice to internal clients, applying and interpreting corporate policies, procedures, and guidelines. In addition, you would be leading our wellbeing programme and learning and development of personnel.. Submission deadline: 31 March 2022

Visiting PhD Fellowship

Our Visiting PhD Fellowship Programme gives registered doctoral students an opportunity to utilize the resources and facilities at UNU-WIDER for their PhD dissertation or thesis research on developing economies, and to work with our researchers in areas of mutual interest. Deadline for applications is 31 March 23:59 UTC+3.

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