Rising public debt in Africa, exacerbated by multiple shocks and limited fiscal space, poses a significant challenge to the region’s development. Half of the low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are in debt distress or at high risk of it, as calls for international action, such as reforms to the international financial architecture are on the agenda in 2025.

Seventy years ago, Simon Kuznets was immortalised by his finding that inequality rises first and then falls later—the hypothesis widely known as the Kuznets Curve. In a new UNU-WIDER project, we look at what one of the most influential papers in the field means for inequality and development today, with the huge progress on what data is now available. 

28 October 2024 | UNU-WIDER Research Fellow Amina Ebrahim has contributed to a policy brief on tax expenditure reporting that was produced as part of Think20 (T20). The policy brief offers policy recommendations for the G20 Summit in Brazil in November 2024.

His paper looks at how the richest people respond to changes in personal income taxes, showing different ways they adjust. Using detailed data from tax records and changes in tax rates for the top 1% of earners in Uruguay, the study finds that people work less when taxes go up, with a response size of 0.577, partly due to them adjusting how much they work.