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Economic inequality, poverty, corruption and social exclusion in Africa
"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many". (Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and  Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (Book 5, Ch. 1, Part II p.580)
On planning for development: Inequality and social exclusion
Economic inequality, poverty and corruption in
Africa
Asia
Latin America
China
United States of America

From Africa Renewal, Vol.20 #2 (July 2006), page 16
Combating inequality in Africa
Lessen inequities to reduce poverty and reach MDGs, says UN
By Ernest Harsch
Workers in Burkina Faso are angry. Four times in 2005 and then again this May, the country’s trade unions shut down economic activity through a series of national general strikes. Thousands marched in the streets of that West African nation to protest low salaries, high prices, lost jobs and inadequate social benefits.


Barrientos, Armando. 2004
Cash Transfers for Older People Reduce Poverty and Inequality.
The paper discusses the poverty and inequality reduction properties of non-contributory pension in Brazil, South Africa and Bangladesh. It examines the development of non-contributory pension programmes in the countries involved, and the institutional factors behind their extension and current sustainability. It also examines the incidence of non-contributory pension programmes on poverty and inequality.
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Ross, Michael. 2004.
Mineral Wealth and Equitable Development.
In theory, new mineral wealth should offer governments a chance to boost economic growth and reduce inequality. In practice, it often leads to economic stagnation, civil conflict, and heightened inequality. To avoid these problems, governments must navigate a complex series of economic, social, and political challenges. One of the most difficult challenges is deciding how to deal equitably with the regional or local communities where the extraction occurs. Both the central government and local communities typically claim ownership of the resources, dispute the other side’s claims, and have some ability to slow or block projects they dislike. Mineral firms are often caught between the two sides. When these disputes can be resolved, mineral development can proceed; when they cannot – as in Bolivia, Sudan, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea – the result may be political unrest and violent conflict. This paper explores the problems and opportunities that governments, firms, and local communities face when they must divide the costs and benefits of a mineral development project. It makes four central arguments:
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Sabates-Wheeler, Rachel. 2005
Asset Inequality and Agricultural Growth: How Are Patterns of Asset Inequality Established and Reproduced?
The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between distributions of asset inequality, how these distributions are created and maintained, and agricultural growth. We intend to investigate what policies and institutions tend to promote equally shared growth. The motivating question that guides our study is: How does differential access to productive assets in the agricultural sector, at various levels (regional, community and household), effect inequalities in agricultural outcomes in terms of productivity and poverty? The dominant discourse on agricultural productivity and distribution has been largely technocratic, focusing on input-output relationships, defined and measured with a yardstick specific to the discipline of economics. We review certain strands of this literature in depth. A less well-known strand of literature emphasises the social and political constructions and reproductions of a variety of inequalities. While this is a relatively small literature we use it to broaden our understanding of the processes and institutions that link inequality and productivity. Furthermore, we use Ethiopian agriculture as a case study to highlight the persistent nature of inequality as causally related to historical choices and path dependency. Rather than unidirectional causalities, what we observe is a complex system whereby inequality affects growth which in turn reinforces processes that exacerbate and reproduce inequalities.
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Shepherd, Andrew and E. Gyimah-Boadi, with Sulley Gariba, Sophie Plagerson and Abdul Wahab Musa. 2004
Bridging the North South Divide in Ghana.
The intractability of regional inequality in Ghana Regional inequality is significant: average per capita incomes are 2-4 times lower than elsewhere in the country, and, while inter-regional income inequality accounts for only about 1/5 of total inequality in Ghana, it increased during the 1990s, and it could be anticipated that this trend will have continued into the new millennium. The incidence of poverty fell little in the north (and the average depth of poverty increased), while it fell moderately in much (but not all) of the south during the 1990s. Part of the reason may be the north’s dependence on ‘ food crop farming’, an occupation which did not benefit from the liberalised economy of the 1980s and 1990s. There have been disproportionately few investment projects in the northern regions in the early part of this decade, confirming the likelihood that there will be little growth-induced reduction of north-south inequality or poverty in the north.
AbdelRahmen El Lahga
Comparing Wealth Polarization Over Time and Across Countries in Africa
Institut Superieur de Gestion, Tunisia - 2005
 


Branco Milanovic
Global income inequality: what it is and why it matters?
World Bank papers - 2005
Global inequality is a relatively recent topic. The first calculations of inequality across world citizens were done in the early 1980s.2 This is because in order to calculate global inequality, one needs to have data on (within-)national income distributions for most of the countries in the world, or at least for most of the populous and rich countries. But it is only from the early- to mid-1980s that such data became available for China, Soviet Union and its constituent republics and large parts of Africa. Before we move to an analysis of global inequality, however it is useful to set the stage by delineating what topics we shall be concerned with and what not...





 

Sam Moyo, 2004
Socio-economic dominance of ethnic and racial groups – the African experience
This paper is one of many contributions commissioned by the UNDP’s HDR report office. The objective of the paper is to examine the nature and extent of socio-economic dominance and exclusion in Africa, including efforts to redress inequities. The specific objectives are to develop a conceptual framework examining ethnic and racial socio-economic dominance in Africa; identify the historical and specifically colonial roots of ethnicity and socio-economic disparities; assess contemporary empirical patterns of socio-economic disparities along ethnic and racial lines, based upon key selected variables; analyze the strategies used to mobilize ethnicity and race towards the accumulation of power and economic resources; and to examine public policies and civic strategies aimed at redressing ethnic and racial resource imbalances.

 
United Nations University
World Institute for Development Economic Research:

DP2003/25 Kym Anderson:
Trade Liberalization, Agriculture, and Poverty in Low-income Countries
This paper offers an economic assessment of the opportunities and challenges provided by the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda, particularly through agricultural trade liberalization, for low-income countries seeking to trade their way out of poverty. After discussing links between poverty, economic growth and trade, it reports modelling results showing that farm product markets remain the most costly of all goods market distortions in world trade. It focuses on what such reform might mean for countries of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in particular, both without and with their involvement in the MTN reform process. What becomes clear is that if those countries want to maximize their benefits from the Doha round, they need also to free up their own domestic product and factor markets so their farmers are better able to take advantage of new market-opening opportunities abroad. Other concerns of low-income countries about farm trade reform also are addressed: whether there would be losses associated with tariff preference erosion, whether food-importing countries would suffer from higher food prices in international markets, whether China’s WTO accession will provide an example of trade reform aggravating poverty via cuts to prices received by Chinese farmers, and the impact on food security and poverty alleviation. The paper concludes with lessons of relevance for low-income countries for their own domestic and trade policies.
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DP2003/28
Giovanni Andrea Cornia and Tony Addison with Sampsa Kiiski:
Income Distribution Changes and their Impact in the Post-World War II Period

This paper analyses the trends in within-country inequality during the post-World War II period, with particular attention to the last 20 years. This is done on the basis of a review of the relevant literature and of an econometric analysis of inequality trends in 73 countries, which account for 80 per cent of the world’s population and 91 per cent of world GDP-PPP. The paper suggests that the last two decades have been characterized by a surge in within-country inequality in about two-thirds of the developing, developed and transitional nations analysed. It also suggests that in those countries where the upsurge in inequality was sizeable or where inequality rose from already high levels, growth and poverty alleviation slowed down perceptibly. While this trend towards higher inequality differs substantially across countries in its extent, timing and specific causes, it marks a clear departure from the pattern observed during the first 30 years of the post-World War II period during which a widespread move towards greater egalitarianism was noted in the majority of the socialist, developing and industrialized economies, with the exception of Latin America and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.

DP2003/52
Chris Elbers, Peter Lanjouw, Johan Mistiaen, Berk Özler and Ken Simler:
Are Neighbours Equal? Estimating Local Inequality in Three Developing Countries (PDF 340KB)

DP2003/66
Dirk Willem te Velde and Oliver Morrissey:
Spatial Inequality for Manufacturing Wages in Five African Countries (PDF 238KB)

DP2003/70
Luc Christiaensen, Lionel Demery and Stefano Paternostro:
Reforms, Remoteness and Risk in Africa: Understanding Inequality and Poverty during the 1990s (PDF 281KB)
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DP2003/90
Simon Appleton:
Regional or National Poverty Lines? The Case of Uganda in the 1990s (PDF 204KB)

RP2004/04 David E. Sahn and David C. Stifel: Urban-Rural Inequality in Living Standards in Africa (PDF 280KB)

RP2004/03 Michael Bleaney and Akira Nishiyama: Economic Growth, Income Distribution and Poverty: Time-series and Cross-country Evidence from the CFA-zone Countries of sub-Saharan Africa (PDF 244KB)

RP2004/02 David Fielding: How Does Monetary Policy Affect the Poor? Evidence from the West African Economic and Monetary Union (PDF 329KB)

RP2004/19 Jean-Paul Azam: Poverty and Growth in the WAEMU after the 1994 Devaluation (PDF 393KB)

RP2004/32 Michael Grimm: The Medium- and Long-term Effects of an Expansion of Education on Poverty in Côte d’Ivoire: A Dynamic Microsimulation Study (PDF 301KB)

RP2004/42 Arne Bigsten and Abebe Shimeles: Prospects for ‘Pro-Poor’ Growth in Africa (PDF 261KB)

RP2004/39 Arne Bigsten and Abebe Shimeles: Dynamics of Poverty in Ethiopia (PDF 487KB)

RP2004/07 Barry McCormick and Jackline Wahba: Return International Migration and Geographical Inequality: The Case of Egypt (PDF 269KB)

RP2004/06 Mattia Romani: Love Thy Neighbour? Evidence from Ethnic Discrimination in Information Sharing within Villages (PDF 397KB)

RP2005/47 Justine Nannyonjo: Conflicts, Poverty and Human Development in Northern Uganda (PDF 151KB)

RP2005/71 Peter Quartey: Financial Sector Development, Savings Mobilization and Poverty Reduction in Ghana (PDF 304KB)

RP2005/34 Indranil Dutta and Ajit Mishra: Does Inequality lead to Conflict? (PDF 273KB)

DP2006/04 George Rapsomanikis and Alexander Sarris: The Impact of Domestic and International Commodity Price Volatility on Agricultural Income Instability: Ghana, Vietnam and Peru (PDF 152KB)

RP2006/51 Alemayehu Geda, Abebe Shimeles and Daniel Zerfu: Finance and Poverty in Ethiopia: A Household Level Analysis (PDF 270KB)

DP2003/08
Stefan Dercon and John Hoddinott:
Health, Shocks and Poverty Persistence

In this paper we review the evidence on the impact of large shocks, such as drought, on child and adult health, with particular emphasis on Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Our focus is on the impact of shocks on long-term outcomes, and we ask whether there are intrahousehold differences in these effects. The evidence suggests substantial fluctuations in body weight and growth retardation in response to shocks. While there appears to be no differential impact between boys and girls, adult women are often worse affected by these shocks. For children, there is no full recovery from these losses, affecting adult health and education outcomes, as well as lifetime earnings. For adults, there is no evidence of persistent effects from transitory shocks in our data.

DP2003/25 Kym Anderson:
Trade Liberalization, Agriculture, and Poverty in Low-income Countries
This paper offers an economic assessment of the opportunities and challenges provided by the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda, particularly through agricultural trade liberalization, for low-income countries seeking to trade their way out of poverty. After discussing links between poverty, economic growth and trade, it reports modelling results showing that farm product markets remain the most costly of all goods market distortions in world trade. It focuses on what such reform might mean for countries of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in particular, both without and with their involvement in the MTN reform process. What becomes clear is that if those countries want to maximize their benefits from the Doha round, they need also to free up their own domestic product and factor markets so their farmers are better able to take advantage of new market-opening opportunities abroad. Other concerns of low-income countries about farm trade reform also are addressed: whether there would be losses associated with tariff preference erosion, whether food-importing countries would suffer from higher food prices in international markets, whether China’s WTO accession will provide an example of trade reform aggravating poverty via cuts to prices received by Chinese farmers, and the impact on food security and poverty alleviation. The paper concludes with lessons of relevance for low-income countries for their own domestic and trade policies.
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On Capitalist Economic and Political Terrorism
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