Although employment in low-income countries (LICs) is strikingly concentrated in the informal sector, the contribution of this sub-economy to the larger economy is not well understood. The traditional view holds that labour markets are segmented; the informal sector provides subsistence income, or a pool of surplus labour for the formal sector, and will likely disappear…
Employment
Empowering Women through Public Policy
In 2005, India’s Parliament passed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a landmark in social protection legislation for the country. The Act moved employment into the domain of legally enforceable rights for a population no less than 120 million, making it the largest work/welfare programme in the world. Since 2009, the eponymous anti-poverty programme has…
Globalization and the Gender Gap
The third Millennium Development Goal is to “Promote gender equality and empower women.” This goal is given some urgency by the fact that significant gender gaps remain, especially in the Low-Income countries (LICs). The World Bank’s 2012 World Development Report, “Gender Equality and Development,” stressed that in the LICs women lag behind men in a…
Girls Empowered by Microfranchising
Integrating young adults into the formal labour market is a major challenge facing developing nations, particularly in Africa (World Bank 2007). High levels of unemployment, especially among youth, have led many policymakers to advocate microfinance (cf Yunus 1999) and other forms of credit market expansion aimed at promoting entrepreneurship. However, empirical evidence on the overall…
Structural Change, International Trade, and Labour Markets in a Low-Income Country
The project consists of two parts. The first part of the project seeks to understand the relationship between trade, employment, and productivity in a low-income country setting. This topic is particularly timely in the context of recent bilateral free trade agreements and international trade negotiations, which aim to improve the trading prospects of low-income countries. …
Addressing Gender Inequalities in Earnings and Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa through Innovative Approaches
Youth employment and micro, small and medium sized enterprise (MSME) development are often in the public debate. Governments in Africa have recently introduced a number of programmes to promote employment via these mechanisms, but the understanding of which interventions are most effective and for which types of individuals they have an impact is limited. Furthermore,…
Gender and Employment in Central Asia
The overall objective of this project is to study the position of women in the labour market as well as policies that shape their position in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two low-income countries in Central Asia. We focus on three core dimensions. First, we are concerned with the type of work that women perform in the…
Globalization and the Gender Gap
The third Millennium Development Goal is to “Promote gender equality and empower women.” This goal is given some urgency by the fact that significant gender gaps remain, especially in the Low-Income countries (LICs). The World Bank’s 2012 World Development Report, “Gender Equality and Development,” stressed that in the LICs women lag behind men in a…
The Formal-Informal Labour Nexus and Growth
Although employment in low-income countries (LICs) is strikingly concentrated in the informal sector, the contribution of this sub-economy to the larger economy is not well understood. The traditional view holds that labour markets are segmented; the informal sector provides subsistence income, or a pool of surplus labour for the formal sector, and will likely disappear…