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This paper investigates the effects of social assistance on subjective well-being looking at the case of Kyrgyzstan. For this purpose, we exploit recent changes in the design of social assistance and apply a difference in difference (DiD) method combined with an inverse probability weighting (IPW) technique. In contrast to the existing literature, we find that in the short-term, the receipt of social assistance benefits is associated with lower levels of subjective well-being. Our findings also reveal that participation in social assistance leads to some reduction in satisfaction regarding recipients' own economic conditions. Moreover, we find that the negative effects on subjective well-being disappear for the oldest generations, which experienced the dissolution of the Soviet Union. By contrast, the effect is negative for the youth, who grew up in a new society where needing help is ultimately the responsibility of the individual citizen. For individuals with high trust in political institutions, the negative effect of state intervention does not hold, while it persists in case of low trust in political institutions.

This paper analyses how inequality across counties in the United States of America has shaped the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of protests. The empirical analysis combines weekly data between January and December 2020 on levels of COVID-19-related policy stringency and protest incidence at the county level with measures of county-level inequality at the start of the pandemic. The results show that more stringent measures to contain the pandemic were instrumental in driving the incidence of protests, but only in counties with high levels of inequality before the start of the pandemic, where grievances may have been initially stronger. Further analysis suggests that the impact of government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic is largely explained by changes in economic conditions (rise in unemployment and changes in economic activities and spending) in counties with the highest levels of inequality. Unequal counties with lower trust in political institutions but higher levels of social trust and civic engagement at the start of the pandemic are also more likely to experience more protests as a response to more stringent policies.

We study an age-old question in political economy: does government spending on welfare ensure peace? This question was at the heart of the European Welfare State model of the early 20th century, and remains relevant today in face of rising inequalities and political conflict. Yet there is limited empirical evidence about this question. We make use of a panel of 12 Latin American countries over the period 1970–2010 to show that welfare spending has led to substantial reductions in conflict across the region. This effect is more pronounced when associated with reductions in inequality and increasing social and institutional trust.

This article empirically investigates the effect of structural transformation on wage inequality in Asia, using industry-level data for three skill groups of workers. While structural transformation, associated with technological progress, productivity catching-up, and capital deepening, has contributed to Asias sustained growth, its effect on income inequality remains uncertain. Our results show that the process of economic transformation has exacerbated inequality in the region by increasing the relative share of high-skilled workers in total compensation. This is mainly due to a shift toward more productiveand more intensive in the use of skilled laboractivities both within and between industries. However, we also find that policy responses, especially investments in education, mitigate the increase in inequality.

This paper investigates the long-term impact of economic shocks on populism, by exploiting a natural experiment created by the trade liberalization process implemented in Brazil between 1990 and 1995. This high impact and low duration event generated a profound shock to the economy with, we argue, long term implications for political outcomes. We focus on the 2002 and 2018 presidential elections in Brazil, which resulted in the election of a left-wing and a right-wing populist president, respectively. The results show that trade reforms explain the rise of populism in Brazil during the last two decades. Microregions with larger tariff cuts in the early 1990s had significantly higher preferences for Lula in 2002 and were also more likely to support Bolsonaro in 2018. The link between trade liberalization and populism is mediated by austerity in both cases. The shift between left-wing and right-wing preferences is driven by the supply side of populism, whereby each leader took advantage of existing cleavages in the country at the time of their election-driven by inequality in the case of Lula and by insecurity and corruption in the case of Bolsonaro-to develop narratives against austerity that would appeal to their target audiences.

We combine data on Chinese development projects with data from Demographic and Health Surveys to study the impact of Chinese aid on household welfare in sub-Saharan Africa. We use a novel methodology to test the effect of Chinese aid on three important development outcomes: education, health, and nutrition. For each outcome, we use difference-in-difference estimations to compare household areas near Chinese project sites to control areas located farther away, before and after receiving Chinese aid. This empirical strategy rules out many confounding factors that can bias measuring the impact of Chinese aid on our outcome variables. First, we find that Chinese projects significantly improve education and child mortality in treatment areas, but do not significantly affect nutrition. Second, social sector projects have a larger effect on outcomes than economic projects. Third, we do not find significant effects for projects that ended more than five years before the post-treatment survey wave. Our results are robust to a host of robustness checks.

This article analyzes the role of individual redistributive preferences on protest participation. The article focuses on Latin America, a region that has experienced substantial protests and demonstrations in the last decade, making use of individual-level data on redistributive preferences and protest participation collected across eighteen countries in 2010, 2012, and 2014. The results show evidence for an association between strong individual preferences for redistribution and participation in protests motivated by the low quality of services and institutions, failures to reduce corruption, and perceived lower standards of living. The results are robust to alternative estimators, samples, and model specifications and not affected by endogeneity concerns.

This paper aims to document and explain the evolution of inequality in Malawi over recent decades using data from various national and international sources. Inequality rose between 1968 and the late 1980s due to the agricultural export-led development model adopted by the Banda regime, which favoured the estate sector and medium-sized farms and thereby created a ‘dualism within the dualism’ that exacerbated the inequality inherited from the colonial era. Between the early 1990s and the mid-2000s, inequality declined, in part owing to the adoption of the Starter Pack programme which covered all smallholders and substantially strengthened maize production per capita, including among the poorest farmers. Finally, inequality rose again between 2004 and 2011. Applying a microdecomposition analysis, this paper shows that a key driver of the rise in inequality during this period was the suboptimal structural transition of the economy from a low-inequality crop agriculture to high-inequality sectors such as livestock production, commerce, transport and formal and informal services located in both urban and rural areas. Such suboptimal structural transition was in part due to the decline of manufacturing induced by the trade liberalization of the 1990s and the skewed distribution of the rise in incomes from livestock production.

This paper analyses the drivers of successful industrialization in developing countries. We consider two different periods, 1970-1990 and 1991-2014, likely to be affected by different patterns of industrialization due to major political, technological and organizational changes. We subsequently develop a methodology to identify a small group of countries for each period, which have exhibited a pattern of industrialization that is not only remarkable in absolute terms, but also sustained. Our analysis reveals that successful industrialization is driven by a combination of factors, including a country's initial economic conditions, factor endowments and other characteristics, such as demography and geography. We also show that other variables that policymakers can control play a crucial role. This includes, among others, the promotion of investments (both public and privately funded) and education; the management of trade and capital openness; financial sector development and the promotion of both macroeconomic and institutional stability. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper aims to advance understanding about the relationship between taxation and inequality in developing countries, focusing on the recent experience of Latin America. Tax changes promoted equality since the early 2000s. In particular, the increasing contribution of direct taxes with respect to indirect taxes promoted the progressivity of the tax system and contributed to the reduction of inequality. Yet the effectiveness of taxation in promoting equality in Latin America is still limited by several factors such as the low average tax revenue, the inability to tax top incomes and the low contribution of taxes on property., Journal of International Development, 30 (2)

Latin American countries experienced important changes in the 2000s. The implementation of fiscal reforms, public debt reduction and the high level of accumulated reserves gave them more policy space than in the past. As a result, Latin American countries were able to implement countercyclical policies to face the negative economic and social consequences associated with the recent macroeconomic shock. Some countries performed better than others. In particular, Social Democratic and Centrist governments enjoyed more fiscal space; they had realized larger budget surpluses over the good years and were able to cope with the crisis without impairing their fiscal conditions. Yet, Latin America has experienced a public finance deterioration in the most recent years. While governments are showing an increasing ability on taxation they are still facing some problems on the expenditure side. As a result, fiscal policy returned acyclical after the period of the crisis. The sustainability of public accounts may be strengthened increasing tax pressure on the richest, reducing tax evasion and improving current spending efficiency. However, the increasing political problems are putting many questions about future trends of public finance in the region.

Time discounting is thought to influence decision-making in almost every sphere of life, including personal finances, diet, exercise and sexual behaviour. In this article, we provide evidence on whether a national poverty alleviation programme in Kenya can affect inter-temporal decisions. We administered a preferences module as part of a large-scale impact evaluation of the Kenyan Government's Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children. Four years into the programme, we find that individuals in the treatment group are only marginally more likely to wait for future money, due in part to the erosion of the value of the transfer by inflation. However, among the poorest households for whom the value of transfer is still relatively large we find significant programme effects on the propensity to wait. We also find strong programme effects among those who have access to credit markets though the programme itself does not improve access to credit.

The broad-ranging benefits of cash transfers are now widely recognized. However, the evidence base highlights that they often fall short in achieving longer-term and second-order impacts related to nutrition, learning outcomes and morbidity. In recognition of these limitations, several ‘cash plus’ initiatives have been introduced, whereby cash transfers are combined with one or more types of complementary support. This paper aims to identify key factors for successful implementation of these increasingly popular ‘cash plus’ programmes, based on (i) a review of the emerging evidence base of ‘cash plus’ interventions and (ii) an examination of three case studies, namely, Chile Solidario in Chile, IN-SCT in Ethiopia and LEAP in Ghana. The analysis was guided by a conceptual framework proposing a menu of ‘cash plus’ components. The assessment of three case studies indicated that effective implementation of ‘cash plus’ components has indeed contributed to greater impacts of the respective programmes. Such initiatives have thereby addressed some of the non-financial and structural barriers that poor people face and have reinforced the positive effects of cash transfer programmes. In design of such programmes, further attention should be paid to the constraints faced by the most vulnerable and how such constraints can be overcome. We conclude with recommendations regarding the provision of complementary support and cross-sectoral linkages based on lessons learned from the case studies. More research is still needed on the impact of the many variations of ‘cash plus’ programming, including evidence on the comparative roles of individual ‘plus’ components, as well as the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour pathways which influence these impacts.

This paper provides an impact evaluation analysis of the 2009 Australian Household Stimulus Package, which was composed by three main cash payments: the Back to School Bonus, the Single Income Family Bonus and the Tax Bonus for Working Australians. Using panel data from the 2008 and 2009 HILDA surveys, the results show that these cash payments reduced the risk of poverty and stimulated consumption expenditure. Nonetheless, only the Back to School Bonus and the Single Income Family Bonus were really important in achieving these goals, while the Tax Bonus for Working Australians did not contribute to stimulate consumption and failed to reduce the risk of poverty. Thus, the analysis confirms the crucial role of governments to protect the most vulnerable groups avoiding a dramatic deterioration of social outcomes and favoring a fast economic recovery when interventions are timely and well-targeted.

Drawing on the contributions from the World Social Science Report 2016, Challenging Inequalities: Pathways to a Just World , this article examines the relationship between economic inequality and political participation. In particular, using the lens of the ‘power cube’ approach ( www.powercube.net ), we argue that understanding the impact of inequality on political participation requires moving beyond the study of its impact on more conventional forms of participation found in voting and ‘voice’ through established or formal democratic processes. Indeed, this relationship is also influenced by hidden and invisible forms of power, at multiple levels from the local to the global, which affect the rules of the game as well as individuals’ aspiration to participate, shaping whether, where and how citizens engage at all. Despite the power of inequality to shape its own consensus, recent evidence also points to the emergence of levels and forms of resistance to inequality outside of traditional channels of participation, which in turn help to expand and prefigure notions of what the new possibilities of change might be. Exploring these dynamics, the article concludes with a brief reflection on possible lessons for activists, policymakers and scholars working to understand, unravel and challenge the knotty intersections of inequality, power and participation.

This paper explores the relationship between a large government cash transfer programme, changes in inequality, and political participation in Mexico. The results show that increases in the coverage of the programme during the 2008 financial crisis resulted in greater individual participation in the last presidential elections and in higher individual propensity to vote, particularly for the incumbent party. The programme was particularly effective in increasing political participation among rural and indigenous groups, and had a mitigating effect on participation in presidential elections and the propensity to vote among the urban unskilled. The programme resulted also in reductions in individual participation in protests. Further analysis suggests that these changes were driven by redistributive gains following the changes to the cash transfer programme.

While structural transformation, driven by technological progress, productivity growth, and capital deepening, has contributed to Asia’s sustained rapid growth, its effect on income inequality is uncertain. The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the effect of structural change on wage inequality in Asia, using industry-level data for three skill groups of workers. Our evidence indicates that structural change, pushed by productivity catch-up with advanced economies, capital deepness, and the shift of the economic structures to more skill-intensive industries, has exacerbated inequality in the region. However, we also find that policy responses, especially investment in education matching the higher demand for skills and competitive exchange rates, can mitigate the increase in inequality.

Published online: 15 Apr 2015 This paper analyses the long run determinants of wage inequality in the manufacturing sector for a group of East Asian countries that have experienced rapid structural transformations in recent decades. In line with the skill biased technological change hypothesis, our results show that within manufacturing structural change which fosters the participation of higher skilled workers is a strong determinant of the wage premium. However, the paper also highlights an unusual feature of the East Asian model, showing how well-designed education policies, prudent macroeconomic management and selective policies towards foreign capital can help to buffer the pressure of structural change on wage inequality, even in an open economy context.

As other countries, Australia was hit by the international crisis. While European countries implemented austerity measures worsening social conditions of their population and pushing the economy into a fallacious fiscal adjustment, the prompt reaction of the Australian government limited the possible negative effects caused by the macroeconomic shock and favoured the process of economic recovery. In particular, this paper provides an impact evaluation analysis at household and child level of the 2009 Household Stimulus Package which was composed by three main cash payments: the Back to School Bonus, the Single Income Family Bonus and the Tax Bonus for Working Australians. Using data from the 2008 and 2009 HILDA surveys, the results show that these cash payments reduced the risk of poverty and stimulated consumption expenditure. Nonetheless, only the Back to School Bonus and the Single Income Family Bonus were really important in achieving these goals, while the Tax Bonus for Working Australians did not contribute to stimulate consumption and failed to reduce the risk of poverty. Thus, the analysis confirms the crucial role of governments to protect the most vulnerable groups avoiding a dramatic deterioration of social outcomes and favouring a fast economic recovery when interventions are timely and well-targeted.

This paper aimed at comparing the well-being of children across the most economically advanced countries of the world while discussing the methodological issues involved in comparing children’s well-being across countries. A Child Well-being Index was constructed to rank countries according to their performance in advancing child well-being. The Index used 30 indicators combined into 13 components, again summarised in 5 dimensions for 29 rich countries. Data from various sources were combined to capture aspects of child well-being: material well-being, health, education, behaviour and risks, housing and environment. The scores for the countries on all variables and combinations of variables were discussed in detail. The Child Well-being Index revealed that the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries (excluding Denmark) did relatively better than the other countries while Romania and the United States performed well below the average. Overall, serious differences existed in child well-being across countries suggesting that in many, improvement could be made in the quality of children’s lives.

This paper presents and discusses child relative income poverty statistics for 35 economically advanced countries, representing all the members of the European Union, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States. As most of the data refer to the year 2008, the results partly reflect the initial impact of the global economic crisis as well as government responses. According to the data, Nordic countries and the Netherlands present the lowest child relative poverty levels, while Japan, the United States, most of the Southern European countries and some of the new EU member states have among the highest. Several factors are associated with the risk of poverty, such as demographic composition, educational level of household members, labour conditions, but the extent to which these factors influence the risk of poverty vary considerably across countries. Lastly, in several countries the role of government is found to be highly important in reducing child poverty.