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Poverty and Inequality
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The research program has two main objectives: (1) to improve current data as well as methods and tools for poverty and inequality analysis. This includes producing new household-level data (notably through the group’s Living Standards Measurement Study), monitoring poverty and inequality using household-level data, developing more reliable “poverty maps”, and rolling out computational tools such as ADePT and PovCalNet; (2) to use the improved data and existing data sources to better understand the economic and social processes determining the extent of poverty and inequality and to assess the effectiveness of specific policies in reducing poverty. | Research Manager: Peter Lanjouw |
FEATURED RESEARCH
 | Learning by Doing: The Social Observatory
March 20, 2013
The Social Observatory in the World Bank's India office aims to connect the Bank’s research department with projects being implemented on the ground. It helps conduct rigorous impact evaluations, develop effective monitoring systems, and design relevant case studies and innovations such as the use of behavioral tools for project assessment and learning. More >> More articles >> |
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BOOKS AND REPORTS
| Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class
November 2012
After decades of stagnation, the size of Latin America's middle class recently expanded to the point where, for the first time ever, the number of people in poverty is equal to the size of the middle class. This volume investigates the nature, determinants and possible consequences of this remarkable process of social transformation. Order | Blog | Free download More >> |
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WORKING PAPERS | The Inequality Possibility Frontier: Extensions and New Applications
This paper extends the Inequality Possibility Frontier approach in two methodological directions. It allows the social minimum to increase with the average income of a society, and it derives all the Inequality Possibility Frontier statistics for two other inequality measures besides the Gini. Finally, it applies the framework to contemporary data, showing that the inequality extraction ratio can be used in the empirical analysis of post-1960 civil conflict around the world. The duration of conflict and the casualty rate are positively associated with the inequality extraction ratio, that is, with the extent to which elite pushes the actual inequality closer to its maximum level. Inequality, albeit slightly reformulated, is thus shown to play a role in explaining civil conflict.
Working Paper 6449, May 2013 | Trade Insulation as Social Protection
This paper shows that in the presence of consumer preference heterogeneity, implementing the optimal social protection policy can potentially induce higher food price volatility. Such policy indeed generates a counter-cyclical demand shock that amplifies the effects of the underlying food shortage. The results call for a reassessment of food stabilization policies. In particular, the authors urge caution against the systematic condemnation of trade insulation practices.
Working Paper 6448, May 2013 | Conducting Ethical Economic Research: Complications from the Field
This essay discusses practical issues confronted when conducting surveys as well as designing appropriate field trials. First, it looks at the challenge of ensuring transparency while maintaining confidentiality. Second, it explores the role of trust in light of asymmetric information held by the surveyor and by the respondents as well as the latter's expectations as to what their participation will set in motion. The authors present case studies relevant to both of these issues. Finally, they discuss the role of ethical review from the perspective of research conducted through the World Bank.
Working Paper 6446, May 2013 | Risk Sharing and Internal Migration
Over the past two decades, more than half the population in rural Tanzania migrated within the country, profoundly changing the nature of traditional institutions such as informal risk sharing. Mass internal migration has created geographically disperse networks, on which the authors collected detailed panel data. By quantifying how shocks and consumption co-vary across linked households, they show how migrants unilaterally insure their extended family members at home. This finding contradicts risk-sharing models based on reciprocity, but is consistent with assistance driven by social norms. Migrants sacrifice 3 to 7 percent of their very substantial consumption growth to provide this insurance, which seems too trivial to have any stifling effect on their growth through migration.
Working Paper 6429, April 2013 | | | More >> |
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