Why equity matters more than growth: The Spirit Level

May 6, 2009
‘Growth with Equity’ is motherhood and apple pie in economic policy-making these days. But in a great new book, Spirit Level, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that ‘economic growth, for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work.’ Above a certain average income (the authors put it at $25,000 per
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Is HIV a disease of inequality?

April 30, 2009
There is a strong statistical link between income inequality and the prevalence of HIV around the world. Göran Holmqvist, of  the Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm and Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, has an IPC paper out on it, and a one page summary.
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Natural disasters will hurt 50% more people by 2015. Why? Climate Change + Inequality

April 21, 2009
There has been some striking progress in reducing the death toll from natural disasters in recent decades. While Cyclone Sidr killed around 3,000 people in Bangladesh in 2007, similar or weaker storms killed 100 times that number in 1972 and 45 times more people in 1991, largely because governments and local communities have since taken action to reduce risk.
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Getting women into paid employment has more impact on poverty than formalizing women’s work or equalizing wage rates – findings from Latin America

April 17, 2009
The International Poverty Centre (IPC) in Brazil churns out some interesting analysis and summarizes them in reader-friendly ‘one pagers’. One recent study looks at the role of gender inequality in explaining income growth, poverty and inequality. Here’s a summary of the one pager. The full paper is here.
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Want to reduce inequality? Look at Latin America!

March 19, 2009
I was at DFID again this week (I should be on a retainer) , presenting a paper on the impact of the global crisis on Latin America (it should be on the Oxfam website by the middle of next week). One interesting glass-half-full v glass-half-empty discussion was over income inequality: I said the region was doing well in reducing the gulf between
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‘Moving Out of Poverty’: Outstanding new mega-study from the World Bank

March 18, 2009
One of the best books I have ever read on development was ‘Crying out for Change’, a summary of a massive late 1990s study by the World Bank called ‘Voices of the Poor’. So it was a delight to pick up the summary of its new and epic successor ‘The Moving Out of Poverty Study’ (I’ve got the book on
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From Poverty to Power in South Africa

February 23, 2009
Just spent a week promoting the South African edition of From Poverty to Power, published by Jacana Media with a nice foreword from Francis Wilson, an authority on poverty and labour markets in SA who also chaired the launch event at the Book Lounge in Cape Town. Jacana put on a great programme of public events, university lectures and got
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Pregnancy and childbirth still killing 500,000 women a year, nearly all in Africa and South Asia

January 22, 2009
Gender injustice is toxic to development, nowhere more clearly than in the stark fact that having a child remains one of the biggest health risks for women worldwide. Fifteen hundred women die every day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. That’s half a million women every year, and the number has hardly budged in two decades, according to UNICEF’s
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Recession, development and climate change: the big picture

December 28, 2008
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How did the book go down in Obamerica?

December 25, 2008
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Health is social, not medical

December 16, 2008
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So what do other people think of the book?

December 15, 2008
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