The Strange and Curious Grip of Country Income Status on Otherwise Smart and Decent People
4/23/14
A set of more or less arbitrary lines continues to do very strange things to discussions about development.
Tag: Inequality
Latin America Left Behind: "It’s Inequality Stupid”?
3/21/14
Min Zhu, first deputy director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), includes this amazing and terrifying chart of Latin America’s growth record in a recent blog post on the IMF website.
Reflecting Back, Looking Forward: Illicit Flows and Inequality
2/18/14
This Q&A was originally posted at Democracy in Africa.
1. Tell us a bit about your work with the Center for Global Development
CGD is a ‘think and do tank’ established in Washington, DC in 2001, doing rigorous research with the aim of producing policy proposals to improve the development impact of (or reduce the damage done by) rich countries. I work for CGD Europe, based in London, as a research fellow leading on illicit financial flows, and continuing to dabble in inequality.
Where Is Life Better…?
2/14/14
Last week, we sat down with Lawrence to record a Wonkcast on our new working paper The Median is the Message: A Good-Enough Measure of Material Well-Being and Shared Development Progress. In the paper, we argue that survey-based median household consumption expenditure (or income) per capita should be incorporated into standard development indicators, as a simple, robust, and durable indicator of typical individual material well-being in a country.
Median Income as a Better Measure of Development Progress—Nancy Birdsall and Christian Meyer
2/10/14
Development progress has traditionally been measured in terms of reductions in poverty and increases in per capita GDP, that is, average income as calculated by dividing total income by the total population. My guests on this week’s Global Prosperity Wonkcast, Nancy Birdsall and Christian Meyer, argue that median income—the income at the middle of a country’s income distribution—is a better measure.
A Solution for the Inequality Politics of Post-2015?
2/4/14
Two main objections have been raised (by the High Level Panel on Post-2015, for example) to including an income inequality target in the post-2015 framework. One is technical, namely the claim that there isn’t a good enough measure of inequality. I don’t take this very seriously. Is this one area of measurement too complex?
The Median as a Better Measure of Development – and Better Than the World Bank’s Shared Prosperity
11/6/13
Last month I spoke at the annual Global Empowerment Meeting organized by Harvard’s Center for International Development, which brings together development wonks, entrepreneurs, and international policy leaders.
Whether and How to Measure Inequality Post-2015 – Alex Cobham
9/24/13
Will reduced inequality be included in some form in the post-2015 development goals? Should it be? And, if so, what is the appropriate yardstick?
How Committed to Equity are Latin American Governments?
4/9/13
Latin America’s distribution of income and wealth has long been the most unequal in the world—but poverty and inequality have been falling consistently since 2000 in most countries of the region. What has changed in Latin America? Are the region’s governments more committed to equality than in the past? Have their tax and spending policies improved? Which governments are most committed? Which least? What policies and programs have been most effective in redistributing income? Are they sustainable? What is holding Latin America back from faster gains?
Palma vs Gini: Measuring post-2015 inequality
4/5/13
This post was originally published in The Broker.