Articles
Aid is not reaching the poorest countries
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The good news is that international aid reached a record high, in real terms, in 2014. The bad news is that aid to the very poorest countries fell sharply in 2014, both in cash terms and as a share of total aid, reversing the welcome trend over the last decade of allocating more aid to the poorest countries. The proportion of global aid going to least developed countries has fallen from about 33 percent in 2013 to 30 percent in 2014.
Here is the tax body again!
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The Paris Agreement on climate change, adopted on 12 December 2015, is one of the landmark decisions of our time. It reflects a monumental triumph of international cooperation and global governance. As is well known, its effective implementation is crucial to the very future of the planet and the human species.
The Agreement's fundamental objective as per article 2 (1) (a) is to hold the increase in the global average temperature to "well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels." Achieving this goal will require a major shift away from the fossil fuel-based economies of today to a more sustainable and green economy. Such a transition, needless to say, will be enormously expensive.
What top researchers discovered when they re-ran the data on income inequality
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The world's most famous inequality researchers unveiled a new way of adding up the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else on Tuesday.
The findings by economists Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman and Thomas Piketty, which are preliminary, were hotly anticipated ever since the American Economic Association conference posted a one-paragraph summary of their results ahead of the event in San Francisco. "In contrast to survey and individual tax data, we find substantial increase in average real pre-tax incomes for the bottom 90% since the 1970s," one line in the preview said, potentially suggesting that concerns about a stagnant middle had been overblown.
That summary was greeted with cheers by some conservatives that proof that Democrats, particularly Hillary Clinton, have been wrong to focus on income inequality and middle-class wage stagnation so much.
Read more: What top researchers discovered when they re-ran the data on income inequality
New strategy to address gender inequality
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The evidence is clear: When countries value girls and women as much as boys and men, when they invest in their health, education and skills training, when they give women greater opportunities to participate in the economy, manage incomes, own and run businesses -- the benefits extend far beyond individual girls and women to their children and families, to their communities, to societies and economies at large.
This is the vision behind the World Bank Group's new Gender Equality Strategy. It charts an ambitious path toward improving opportunities for women and girls because it is not only morally right but critical to economic development.
Fight of Flowers: from Naivasha to Amsterdam
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Not many years ago Kenya’s flowers were produced by hundreds of small producers, providing livelihood for thousands. Now they are produced by a handful of multinationals. Those who own the farms in Naivasha as well as middle agencies make enormous profits, but the direct producers – the wage workers – get very little.
