Poverty, inequality and opportunity

Ending poverty is justifiably an overarching aim of all development efforts, and it is enshrined as the first of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations. Likewise, tackling inequality in opportunities and outcomes has been at the forefront of a wide range of public policy debates.

The unit will introduce you to the economics of poverty, inequality and opportunity by organising the unit material in three main parts.

Part one will review key conceptual and methodological issues in the measurement and monitoring of poverty, inequality and opportunity, including a brief review of global evidence and ongoing debates, highlighting the diversity and the complexities of this evidence. It will also introduce common methods of “macro” and “micro” level analysis of distributional issues.

Part two will discuss the key driving forces for poverty and inequality. These include poverty traps, the role of the labour market and other factor markets, inequality and deprivation in education and health, inequality of opportunity, and intergenerational inequality and mobility.

Part three will focus on the policy space. You will explore economy-wide issues related to the pace and pattern of economic growth, pro-poor growth, sectoral policies, especially for education and health, targeted and untargeted transfer and safety net programs, and the evidence on what works in diverse contexts.