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Begin New Search Topic Inequality Publication Year within 25 Years

81. Inequality in Chile: Perceptions and Patterns

Author:
Ignacia Lecaros, Daniela Paz Cruzat, Ricardo Pommer Muñoz, Pablo Tillan, and Michael Walton
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Chile has pioneered many things: a market-oriented, “neoliberal” approach to development; an impressive transition from authoritarianism to democracy; innovations in social policy; and an extraordinary series of street protests between 2006 and 2019. While often lauded as a model of economic and social development, the protests reflect acute concerns over perceived failures in the Chilean political, economic and cultural system, concerns that were profoundly inflected with issues of inequality and lack of fairness. To inform this contrast, this paper undertakes a systematic assessment of the perceptions and perspectives of Chilean citizens, both in the context of the protests and in their broader expressed views in surveys. The core theme is that “the street was right”, in the specific sense that the protests reflected much wider sentiments across social classes over perceived inequities in economic advancement, social provisioning, and the undignified “treatment” by state actors and elites. The paper then compares these perceptions with some of the “objective” measures of inequality. While alternative measures indicate modest declines in some measures of inequality, Chile remains a very high inequality society, in relation to income, wealth, and education. These perceptions and patterns are central to Chile’s current development challenges, in ways that resonate with the position of many countries in today’s polarized environment. This is the first of two papers, with the sequel exploring the underlying drivers of inequality and implications for policy direction.
Topic:
Education, Health, Inequality, Protests, State, Perception, and Fairness
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

82. Growth Through Inclusion in South Africa

Author:
Ricardo Hausmann, Tim O'Brien, Andrés Fortunato, Alexia Lochmann, and Kishan Shah
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
It is painfully clear that South Africa is performing poorly, exacerbating problems such as inequality and exclusion. The economy’s ability to create jobs is slowing, worsening South Africa’s extreme levels of unemployment and inequality. South Africans are deeply disappointed with social progress and dislike the direction where the country seems to be heading. Despite its enviable productive capabilities, the national economy is losing international competitiveness. As the economy staggers, South Africa faces deteriorating social indicators and declining levels of public satisfaction with the status quo. After 15 years, attempts to stimulate the economy through fiscal policy and to address exclusion through social grants have failed to achieve their goals. Instead, they have sacrificed the country's investment grade, increasing the cost of capital to the whole economy, with little social progress to show for it. The underlying capabilities to achieve sustained growth by leveraging the full capability of its people, companies, assets, and knowhow remain underutilized. Three decades after the end of apartheid, the economy is defined by stagnation and exclusion, and current strategies are not achieving inclusion and empowerment in practice. This report asks the question of why. Why is the economy growing far slower than any reasonable comparator countries? Why is exclusion so extraordinarily high, even after decades of various policies that have aimed to support socio-economic transformation? What would it take for South Africa to include more of its people, capabilities, assets, and ideas in the functioning of the economy, and why aren’t such actions being undertaken already? The Growth Lab has completed a deep diagnostic of potential causes of South Africa’s prolonged underperformance over a two-year research project. Building on the findings of nine papers and widespread collaboration with government, academics, business and NGOs, this report documents the project’s central findings. Bluntly speaking, the report finds that South Africa is not accomplishing its goals of inclusion, empowerment and transformation, and new strategies and instruments will be needed to do so. We found two broad classes of problems that undermine inclusive growth in the Rainbow Nation: collapsing state capacity and spatial exclusion.
Topic:
Inequality, Economic Growth, Unemployment, and Inclusion
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

83. The Post-COVID Consensus

Author:
Shahid Yusuf
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
Development economics is turning a full circle with a difference. This paper addresses the circling back to the policies in vogue during the 1980s and earlier, including industrial policies, coupled with protectionism; accounts for the regression to earlier certitudes after an extended spell of globalization underpinned by market fundamentalism; and indicates how a transforming global environment has enlarged the policy agenda. There is a new policy consensus in the making, which borrows some elements of the Washington Consensus but goes beyond to encompass a broader policy agenda.
Topic:
Development, Markets, Poverty, Inequality, Economic Development, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

84. Informe Iberoamérica 2023

Author:
Marcos Criado De Diego, Daniel Gayo Lafée, Marisa Ramos Rollon, Erika Rodríguez Pinzón, Loreno Ruano, and José Antonio Sanahuja
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Fundación Alternativas
Abstract:
Hoy la realidad de los países que conforman la Asociación Estratégica entre la UE y la CELAC es completamente diferente. Si bien tomaron contacto en la última Cumbre Iberoamericana en República Dominicana, prevalecieron las fracturas y las diferencias entre países y posturas. Ambas regiones enfrentan un contexto desafiante. Ha aumentado el riesgo de fragmentación en bloques geopolíticos y económicos. América Latina y el Caribe están ante el dilema de pertenecer al hemisferio occidental o fortalecer su integración intrarregional. Europa con desafíos inéditos, ante una agenda influída totalmente por el conflicto entre Ucrania y Rusia con una fuerte desaceleración de su crecimiento a un magro 0,1% para 2023, con gastos militares crecientes para apoyar a Ucrania lo que implica dejar atrás otras prioridades de desarrollo y con dilemas sociales para preservar su sociedad de bienestar. América Latina y el Caribe por su parte, es hoy una región más desigual, más pobre, más endeudada, más polarizada y más desconfiada. Enfrenta múltiples crisis sufriendo los impactos del conflicto de Ucrania con altos niveles de inflación (7,7% en promedio) a pesar de que los precios de combustibles y alimentos parecen haber llegado a su límite. El impacto de la pandemia, la crisis climática, las disrupciones en las cadenas de suministro, el endurecimiento de las políticas monetarias y el financiamiento internacional y la deuda pública y privada y baja recaudación fiscal agobian hoy día a esta región. Los riesgos económicos han aumentado junto con la incertidumbre y el desencanto social generando mayor polarización política.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Climate Change, Inequality, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe and Latin America

85. Crisis alimentarias en el norte de África

Author:
Laurence Thieux
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Fundación Alternativas
Abstract:
La guerra en Ucrania, sumándose a las crisis anteriores, ha tenido un fuerte impacto sobre los países de Norte de África dependientes de los mercados mundiales para alimentar a su población. La inflación y la perturbación de las cadenas de suministro han agudizado las crisis económicas y sociales y los riesgos de inseguridad alimentaria de las franjas más vulnerables de la población de esta región incrementando las fracturas territoriales y las desigualdades. Este documento, a cargo de Laurence Thieux, profesora ayudante doctor del Departamento de Relaciones Internacionales e Historia Global de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, trata de arrojar luz sobre las causas estructurales de las crisis de los sistemas alimentarios y agrícolas de algunos países del norte de África (Marruecos, Argelia, Túnez, Libia y Egipto). Se analiza también sus consecuencias y la contestación de unos modelos de desarrollo agrícola cuya sostenibilidad es cada vez más cuestionada por las injusticias sociales que conllevan y el uso desmedido de recursos naturales cada vez más exiguos por el cambio climático.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Food Security, Inequality, and Crisis Management
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Spain, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa

86. Keeping up with the Dlaminis: Perceived inequalities and satisfaction with democracy in Africa

Author:
Thomas Isbell
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
Does perceived inequality shape how satisfied ordinary Africans are with how democracy is functioning in their countries? I use nationally representative Afrobarometer survey data (collected in 2016-2018 in 34 countries, N=45,811) to test whether satisfaction with democracy (SWD) is higher among people who (1) feel that their living conditions are equal to others’ or (2) feel that they are better off than other people. Controlling for both individual- and country-level effects, I show that feeling better off than other people increases satisfaction, and feeling worse off than other people decreases satisfaction, with how democracy is functioning in the respondent’s country. People who feel equal to others are more satisfied than those who feel relatively deprived, but less satisfied than people who say they are better off than others. These results suggest egocentric expectations of the functioning of democracy among ordinary Africans. I demonstrate that these relative assessments are significant and comparable in effect size to widely used predictors of satisfaction with democracy found in the literature, such as economic country-level evaluations, partisanship, and political interest. These results therefore should encourage future research to include individual-level comparative assessments as predictors of SWD. Our results represent the most recent cross-national re-examination of predictors of SWD in Africa. My regression results are widely in line with past empirical research – both in and outside of Africa – and suggest that SWD is primarily shaped by political and economic performance evaluations. This points to the explanatory model of SWD in Africa being relatively stable across time.
Topic:
Development, Democracy, Inequality, and Economy
Political Geography:
Africa

87. Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19

Author:
Oxfam Publishing
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men has doubled since the pandemic began. The incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of COVID-19. Widening economic, gender, and racial inequalities—as well as the inequality that exists between countries—are tearing our world apart. This is not by chance, but choice: “economic violence” is perpetrated when structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people. This causes direct harm to us all, and to the poorest people, women and girls, and racialized groups most. Inequality contributes to the death of at least one person every four seconds. But we can radically redesign our economies to be centered on equality. We can claw back extreme wealth through progressive taxation; invest in powerful, proven inequality-busting public measures; and boldly shift power in the economy and society. If we are courageous, and listen to the movements demanding change, we can create an economy in which nobody lives in poverty, nor with unimaginable billionaire wealth—in which inequality no longer kills.
Topic:
Health, Inequality, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

88. Monetary Policy and Racial Inequality

Author:
Alina Bartscher, Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick, and Paul Wachtel
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The racial tensions that spread across the United States in 2020 have caught the attention of monetary policymakers and focused concern on the size and persistence of the gap between both the income and wealth of black and white households. There is widespread recognition that despite some decline in overt labor market discrimination, gains in educational opportunities, and income growth of black households since the onset of the civil rights movement, the gaps persist and have even grown larger by some measures. According to the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), the median wealth of a white household was $184,390, compared with only $20,730 for the median black household. The typical black household owns only about 11 percent of the wealth of the typical white household. The income gap is smaller but still large; the median income of black households ($38,688) is 58 percent of the median income of white households ($67,196).
Topic:
Race, Monetary Policy, Inequality, and Economic Policy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

89. The Value-Added Tax (VAT) Improvement Program: Raising the operational efficacy of the VAT administration in Bangladesh

Author:
Oxfam Publishing
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Bangladesh has a weak and inequitable tax system. Over the past 15 years, the government of Bangladesh (GoB) has relied on the regressive value-added tax (VAT) for more than a third of all revenues, with little progress towards strengthening direct taxation of high net-worth individuals and large corporations. From 2015–2021, the World Bank’s VAT Improvement Program (VIP) assisted the Bangladesh National Board of Revenue in improving VAT administration. VIP helped speed up automation and increase revenues. But the program did not include any objectives to improve VAT equity and fairness, and it also fell short on improving transparency and taxpayer satisfaction. To address VAT’s regressive nature and its impact on low income households, the GoB needs to improve coverage of social protection programmes. Bangladesh and its external partners should focus on strengthening progressive direct taxation. Meanwhile, the government must end gender-blind VAT administration and recognize that VAT negatively affects low income female entrepreneurs and consumers.
Topic:
Inequality, Tax Systems, Social Order, and Gender
Political Geography:
Bangladesh and Asia

90. The Crisis of Extreme Inequality in SADC: Fighting austerity and the pandemic

Author:
Matthew Martin
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the extreme inequality in Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, and pushed millions into poverty. The economic crisis continues due to the obscene global vaccine inequality. As of end March 2022, a dismal 14% of SADC citizens had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, compared with 65.5% in the United States and 73% in the European Union. In 2021, with infections rising in SADC, the critical health, social protection and economic programmes put in place by most governments in 2020 were rolled back and replaced with austerity, in the context of growing debt burdens and lack of external support for country budgets. Such austerity has been built into IMF programmes in the region. Recovering from the pandemic, however, offers SADC governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do what their citizens want: increase taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, boost public spending (especially on healthcare, education and social protection), and increase workers’ rights as well as tackling joblessness and precarious work. With external support, including through debt relief and aid, they could reduce inequality drastically and eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.
Topic:
Governance, Inequality, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Africa and Southern Africa