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Inequality: Driving Forces and Policy Solutions

By Carlos Gradin and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa

The many faces of inequality

Measuring inequality isn’t as simple as it may seem. We know that since the 1970s global inequality has been falling in relative terms, but absolute inequality has been increasing over the same period. There are also substantial differences in trends across the different regions of the world. In North America, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa inequality has been increasing steadily in both relative and absolute terms, while in Latin America, East Asia, and the Pacific, absolute inequality increased while relative inequality fell. Continue reading “Inequality: Driving Forces and Policy Solutions”

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More humility about what we think is good:

Reflections on revising the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index

By Sabina Alkire, Usha Kanagaratnam and Frank Vollmer

In her Oxford University Press blog post, “Some value safety, others value risk”, Valerie Tiberius, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, invites the reader to reflect on how to value well-being and a good life.

The blog was written in promotion of her latest book, “Well-Being as Value Fulfillment”, and Tiberius discusses the acts of Colin O’Brady and Louis Rudd, both married and one a father, who became the first to cross the Antarctic unsupported in 2018 for no other apparent reason than: it had never been achieved before. Continue reading “More humility about what we think is good:”

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What Ever Happened to Mixed Methods in Development Research (and has Star Trek got anything to do with it)?

By Andy Sumner, Laura Camfield, Keetie Roelen and Lukas Schlogl.

‘Q-squared’ is a best-selling Star Trek book from the mid-1990s (yes there are Star Trek books, not just films and TV series) about someone who has the power to tamper with time and reality resulting in three parallel universes that intersect. Just a few years later the term came to prominence in three parallel universes in development studies (spooky, eh?). Those parallel universes being qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods researchers. Continue reading “What Ever Happened to Mixed Methods in Development Research (and has Star Trek got anything to do with it)?”