https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

We investigate whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997), with negative results. We then investigate the evolution of income inequality over the same period and its correlation with growth. The dominating feature is inequality convergence across countries. This convergence has been significantly faster amongst developed countries. Growth does not appear to influence the evolution of inequality over time. Outline

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/81822/1/02-28.pdf

Economic growth and income inequality

Economics and Information Theory

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a new survey-based index designed to measure the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector. The WEAI was initially developed as a tool to reflect women’s empowerment that may result from the United States government’s Feed the Future Initiative, which commissioned the development of the WEAI. The WEAI can also be used more generally to assess the state of empowerment and gender parity in agriculture, to identify key areas in which empowerment needs to be strengthened, and to track progress over time. The WEAI is an aggregate index, reported at the country or regional level, based on individual-level data collected by interviewing men and women within the same households. The WEAI comprises two subindexes. The first assesses the degree to which women are empowered in five domains of empowerment (5DE) in agriculture. It reflects the percentage of women who are empowered and, among those who are not, the percentage of domains in which women enjoy adequate achievements. These domains are (1) decisions about agricultural production, (2) access to and decisionmaking power about productive resources, (3) control of use of income, (4) leadership in the community, and (5) time allocation. The second subindex (the Gender Parity Index [GPI]) measures gender parity. The GPI reflects the percentage of women who are empowered or whose achievements are at least as high as the men in their households. For those households that have not achieved gender parity, the GPI shows the empowerment gap that needs to be closed for women to reach the same level of empowerment as men. This technical paper documents the development of the WEAI and presents pilot data from Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Uganda, so that researchers and practitioners seeking to use the index in their own work would understand how the survey questionnaires were developed and piloted, how the qualitative case studies were undertaken, how the index was constructed, how various indicators were validated, and how it can be used in other settings.

/pdf/the-women-s-empowerment-in-agriculture-index-2a8n81bl0r.pdf

The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index

Human Development Report 2006

This paper provides a review of empirical knowledge about income inequality in the Arab region, focusing primarily on the issues of data and measurement, and the characterization of its patterns and trends. The review shows good progress in the availability of data and quality of measurement. However, the region remains far behind progress being achieved worldwide in terms of coverage and comparability across countries, improvements in quality and content of data, and, more importantly, accessibility of available micro-data to scholars. Within these data constraints and limitations, the available evidence shows moderately high levels of inequality in terms of household expenditure compared to other regions of the world. The patterns of inequality show quite significant variation across countries. One striking result is the weak time variability of the inequality indexes in most of the countries of the region. Alternative measures of welfare distribution such as of horizontal inequality, polarization or in...

Income Inequality in the Arab Region: Data and Measurement, Patterns and Trends

Equity and Inequality in the Arab Region

Empirical evidence suggests that women are more vulnerable to chronic poverty and gender inequality is likely to condition the impacts of policies on the rest of the economy and consequently on poverty itself. While gender-responsive budgeting has made significant headway into economic policy, taxation has lagged behind. Because tax policy is the most economically direct way by which governments can influence individual behavior, requests have been made for gender-responsive tax policy that promote gender equality. This study applied to Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia aims to contribute to this debate by assessing the induced gender employment bias of current taxation policies in these countries. It explores the pattern of male and female employment and discusses the indirect tax distortions across sectors within each country and between countries. The possible impact of the indirect tax distortion on male and female employment is quantitatively assessed using a gender-focused computable general equilibrium model. The analysis reveals that indirect taxes, in particular import duties, are biased for female employment in Algeria and Egypt, but not in Morocco and Tunisia. Female labor-intensive industries in Algeria and Egypt are highly protected in the benchmark and are not competitive internationally so that removing protection would increase competition with cheaper import substitutes and cause the sector to contract and lay off workers. In contrast, the same female labor-intensive industries are less protected in Morocco and Tunisia. Hence, removal of indirect taxes in these countries would result in quasi-neutral effects between male and female salary and wage earnings. The taxation policies in the Middle East and North Africa region have changed over the last decade and may undergo significant changes in the coming years. In light of this unpredictability, an assessment of the tax-related relative price bias on men and women constitutes a crucial step toward providing adequate guidance to planners, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

/pdf/taxation-policy-and-gender-employment-in-the-middle-east-and-1k11ithbwu.pdf

Taxation Policy and Gender Employment in the Middle East and North Africa Region: A Comparative Analysis of Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia

The main objective of this paper is to perform a decomposition analysis of the level of inequality between socioeconomic groups and geopolitical regions of each country to better our understanding of the contribution of each socioeconomic group to overall inequality. This paper will fill in an important gap of knowledge of inequality patterns in the Arab region, by drawing a rough picture of monetary inequality. Our results show that differences in mean income across groups are much larger in Tunisia, Morocco and mainly Yemen and accounts for a much larger proportion of overall inequality.

Decomposing Income Inequality in The Arab Region

Nous analysons l’evolution de la pauvrete au Quebec et au Canada de 1996 a 2005 ainsi que les effets des principaux impots et transferts aux particuliers sur cette pauvrete. Cette analyse complete les evaluations habituelles de la pauvrete faites par Statistique Canada, l’Institut de la statistique du Quebec et le ministere de l’Emploi et de la Solidarite sociale du Quebec. Des tests de robustesse sont effectues pour traiter du probleme important du choix du seuil et de l’indice de pauvrete. Les resultats montrent que le classement des provinces canadiennes en termes de pauvrete absolue et relative depend du seuil et de l’indice de pauvrete retenus. Nos methodes preferees d’evaluation et de comparaison de la pauvrete indiquent que le Quebec n’affiche en general pas plus de pauvrete absolue ou relative que les autres provinces, et que la pauvrete au Quebec est statistiquement et robustement inferieure a celle de la Colombie-Britannique, de l’Ontario et du reste du Canada.

/pdf/y-a-t-il-plus-de-pauvrete-au-quebec-qu-au-canada-1ec08ntvrb.pdf

Sami Bibi

Papers

Income Inequality in the Arab Region: Data and Measurement, Patterns and Trends

Equity and Inequality in the Arab Region

Taxation Policy and Gender Employment in the Middle East and North Africa Region: A Comparative Analysis of Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia

Decomposing Income Inequality in The Arab Region

Y a-t-il plus de pauvreté au Québec qu’au Canada?