Past Projects
Inequality and Economic Inclusion
South Africa remains one of the most inequitable countries in the world, distinguished by unusually high levels of joblessness as well as inequalities in wages and asset ownership. TIPS work in this area has focused on:
- How the structure of the economy affects unemployment, local economic development and economic opportunities. This work has considered the nature of dominant industries and value chains, competition, education and training systems, small enterprise, the informal sector and labour markets.
- The effects of the spatial inequality that was entrenched under apartheid, both in terms of the persistence of profound differentials between the former “homelands” and the rest of the country as well as within urban areas, especially the metros. TIPS has looked at migrant labour in mining; rural development strategies; the agricultural value chain; and the scope for payment for environmental services to create rural employment.
- Support for employment-creation programmes and in particular the Community Work Programme (CWP). This work has included advisory services on the scaling up of the CWP, facilitation of alignment between the Department of Cooperative Governance and other partner departments, and inputs into the monitoring and evaluation of the programme.
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17 June 2018
Community Work Programme - background materials
These background materials on the Community Work Programme were prepared as part of induction training for non-profit agencies appointed to implement the CWP, and as an introduction for other stakeholders. The materials were originally developed for the Department of Co-operative…
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Community Work Programme
27 January 2016
A perfect storm: Migrancy and mining in the North West province
The roots of the industrial conflict in the North West province platinum mining belt in 2012 that led to the Marikana massacre cannot be found in the normal narrative of low wages and circular migrant labour entrenched under apartheid. Although…
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
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19 December 2014
DPME – Migrancy and Mining in the Planinum Belt
TIPS was commissioned by the Presidency (Department of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation) to better understand migrant labour on the platinum belt and why the community factors and living conditions were a factor that contributed to the major strikes in the…
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
15 October 2014
Manufacturing employment and equality in South Africa
In 2014, South Africa remained one of the most unequal countries in the world, an outlier by global standards in terms of both overall inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient and levels of joblessness. For proponents of industrialisation as…
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
19 January 2014
UN Development Project – Impact of Inequality Report
TIPS was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme to undertake a study on the impact of social and economic inequality development in South Africa. (2014). See research report
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
08 December 2013
The Community Work Programme: Building a Society that Works
In the context of a global jobs crisis, there is renewed interest in the role of public employment in providing work opportunities. This context has also seen a range innovation in public employment, with new forms of work and new…
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Community Work Programme
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23 August 2013
An Appraisal of Local Economic Development Impact Assessment Methodologies in the Context of the Community Work Programme
This paper looks at the strengths and weaknesses of current methodologies in capturing the kinds of local economic development impacts from the CWP. It aims to fill the gap of methodologies available for measuring economic multipliers in a local economy.…
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Community Work Programme
20 August 2013
The Transformative Potential of Public Employment Programmes
After the Great Depression in the 1930s, part of the recovery in the United States of America relied upon a massive programme of public works, under the Works Progress Administration. Its impact was not just as a stimulus; it also…
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Community Work Programme
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25 April 2013
The South African Community Capability Study: The Context of Public Primary Education and the Community Work Programme
A key part of the motivation to potentially scale up the CWP to a million participants included a proposed strategy of support to schools. This research looks at the impact of CWP's schools support at a sample of schools that…
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Community Work Programme
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This qualitative study assessed the impact of the Community Work Programme (CWP) on the capabilities of participants and communities. It showed the programme had significantly expanded participants capability set and had contributed to improving both individual and community wellbeing. (The…
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Community Work Programme
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This paper looks at the role that potential poverty-reducing impact that the CWP could have is expanded. While acknowledging that there are significant non-monetary impacts, the focus is on measuring the impact that earning the CWP wage would have on…
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Community Work Programme
29 October 2012
Working Paper Series 2012-02 Green Economy Policy Framework and Employment Opportunity: A South African Case Study
In 2012, South Africa remains faced with the triple developmental challenge of unemployment, poverty and inequality. In addition, the country's current economic growth model is heavily resource and energy-intensive, aggravating pressures on the environment and the threat of climate change.…
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
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In the face of a long-standing unemployment crisis that increasingly threatens social and economic stability, employment has at last taken centre stage in South African policy, and with this, a focus on the structural constraints on employment creation within the…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
13 August 2012
Inequality, unemployment and poverty in South Africa
Unemployment and earnings inequality in South Africa have declined in recent years, while the trend in overall income inequality is unclear. Inequality and unemployment both remain at extremely high levels by historical and international standards. There has been a very…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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23 January 2012
Assessment of crèches supported by the Bohlabela Community Work Programme October 2011 by Lima Rural Development Foundation
The Community Work Programme (CWP) was implemented as a pilot programme in Bushbuckridge and several other municipalities in 2009. The programme is essentially an employment safety net employing 2 200 people in Bushbuckridge within four sectors of community work, these…
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Community Work Programme
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19 January 2012
Public Employment Programming
TIPS designed course materials and taught courses for the International Labour Organization on the design and implementation of public employment programming. Delegates from all over the world attended. (2012)
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
18 November 2011
Mediating from the margins: The role of intermediaries in facilitating participation in formal markets by poor producers and users
Patrick Sathorar acts as a marketing consultant for a group of 25-30 HIV-positive women in Nyanga, Cape Town. They produce textile and beaded products and Patrick facilitates their participation in the formal market by sourcing and negotiating contracts for them.…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
15 November 2011
Linking small marginalised producers to modern markets: Are we trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?
Improving small, marginalised producers access to modern markets has increasingly been accepted as an important element in South African policy debates on improving the employment, income and livelihood opportunities for such producers. The importance of market access arises because in…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
14 November 2011
A qualitative evaluation of the Community Work Programme - Umthwalume CWP October 2011 by Thutong Training and Development
The findings clearly answer the question of how beneficiaries have been impacted by CWP. The findings show that the beneficiaries are pleased with the quality of services that are provided through the CWP programme such as home based care, cleaning…
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Community Work Programme
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09 November 2011
Studying the impact of the Community Work Programme on its participants , Matric geography project 2011 Bohlahela CWP
Aim: The Community Work Programme (CWP) is an initiative of the State President's office which is designed to create an employment safety net in rural areas. The aim of this investigation is to study whether or not the CWP has…
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Community Work Programme
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01 November 2011
Identifying appropriate interventions to support the transition from schooling to the workplace
Youth unemployment is extremely high in South Africa, approximately double the national rate. While this is not uncommon internationally, it poses a special problem in South Africa where at least half of young school leavers are unlikely to find work…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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21 August 2011
Asset inequality
The promise of asset-based approaches to poverty, as well as its limitations can be summarised with reference to the popular idiom: “teach a person to fish, rather than giving him a fish”. If the idiom were a development programme or…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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15 July 2011
Inequality and economic marginalisation: How the structure of the economy impacts on opportunities on the margins
In the face of a long-standing unemployment crisis that increasingly threatens social and economic stability, employment has at last taken centre stage in South African policy, and with this, focus is shifting to the structural constraints on employment creation within…
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Community Work Programme
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This case study provides a comparative analysis of two different initiatives designed to promote the smallholder sector in metropolitan Cape Town. The City of Cape Town has developed an urban agriculture policy and initiated a joint venture between itself, the…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
What if unemployed people in South Africa had a right – a real right – to a minimum level of regular work on decent terms? In 2005, India passed a law guaranteeing rural households up to 100 days of work…
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Community Work Programme
19 January 2011
Employment Guarantees
TIPS submitted several inputs to the South African National Planning Commission’s National Development Plan, specifically in the role of employment guarantees and small business development, inequality and economic marginalisation. (2011-2012)
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
What if unemployed people in South Africa had a right – a real right – to a minimum level of regular work, on decent terms? In 2005, India passed a law guaranteeing rural households up to 100 days of…
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Community Work Programme
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Description Unemployment and other employment-related problems do not occur only in times of crisis. As observed by the ILO, there was a Jobs Crisis before the financial crisis, a structural unemployment problem as a result of jobless growth in many…
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Community Work Programme
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23 September 2010
Inequalities in Emerging Economies: What role for Labour Market and Social Policies?
The OECD held a one-day workshop in Paris in May 2010 to present the findings of a series of papers commissioned on this topic from Brazil, India, China and South Africa. Kate Philip was there. For South Africans attending the…
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Community Work Programme
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Street trading is the most common type of informal self-employment activity in South Africa. Traders sell a range of products such as fruits and vegetables, cooked food, new and used clothing, cosmetics, footwear, dvds, “public” telephone services and mobile phone…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
Agriculture plays a unique and multifaceted role in the South African economy. While it contributes less than three percent to the country’s GDP, it provides almost 10 percent of the country’s formal sector employment. The sector has, according to all…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
Within the ambit of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa, government is leading a process to define a Second Economy Strategy. One of the opportunities that has been identified is the agricultural sector, in particular fostering a…
17 April 2009
Employment Intermediation for Unskilled and Low-skilled Work Seekers - Part 1: Overview of the Sector
Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges facing South Africa. Growth has been inadequate, the skills level requirement of new jobs is continually rising, current skills among the workforce are low and inadequate numbers of low end, unskilled jobs are…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
In discussing the relationship between governance and inclusivity this paper’s central argument is that unless there is an ability to build a responsive government at all spheres than there is no connection between the two. The ability of the state…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 April 2009
Income and non-income inequality in post-apartheid South Africa: What are the drivers and possible policy interventions?
South Africa has historically been ranked as one of the most unequal societies in the world, and while the country has experienced sustained positive economic growth since 1994, the impact of this growth on poverty, and particularly inequality, has been…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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The research and policy proposals from the process of reviewing the performance of existing government programmes targeting the second economy and developing an expanded strategy were presented to a 'Work in Progress' workshop in May 2008 and to a conference…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
01 February 2009
Understanding inequality: Promoting equity
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) a third of the global workforce is either unemployed or underemployed barely eking out a living through informal work; selfemployment or as wage workers involved in precarious employment. International competitive pressures have led…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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The paper argues for a broad based access to property, broader than access to title allows, with the potential for wider, quicker and more sustained reach. It motivates for a place for tenure security in the second economy strategy as…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
The task is to reflect on the building of the second economy in small and medium sized towns. This involves a review of secondary sources, as well as an input on quantitative measures to support the main arguments. The paper…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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11 November 2008
The Review of Second economy Programmes: An Overview for the Presidency's Fifteen Year Review
At the July 2007 Cabinet lekgotla, the Presidency was tasked with conducting a review of existing government programmes that target the 'second economy', in order to identify where programmes can be scaled up to achieve greater impacts, and where further…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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South Africa is continuing to urbanise, perhaps not as rapidly as some developing countries but certainly at a rate which has generated a considerable degree of policy anguish over its accompanying rising levels of urban poverty. The Presidency of the…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 November 2008
Making Markets work for People and the Environment: Employment Creation from Payment for Eco-Systems Services
We conducted a partial sectoral analysis of the market for ecosystem goods and services in SouthAfrica by doing the following: We mapped the areas of high eco system productivity and poverty. By overlaying the two datasets, we identified the priority…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 November 2008
Access to Services for Poor People in Urban Areas
This report provides an analytical reflection on the provision of infrastructure services in urban areas, with the aim of enhancing the access of the poor in urban areas to these services. It commences by considering what is meant by “access”…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
This report is based on work undertaken towards developing the urban component of a second economy strategy, as part of the Second Economy Project, an initiative of the Presidency. Within this project Urban LandMark (ULM) was appointed by Trade and…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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Conceptualising the second economy No detailed process will be followed in order to define the concept second economy’. The Second Economy Strategy Project (2008:2) probably summarises it best: “In sum, the concept of the ‘second economy’ is being used as…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
This paper unpacks from a spatial perspective, the duality of urban contexts in South Africa that is of unprecedented opulence on the one hand and remarkable deprivation on the other, as stated by Sen (1999: xi). Although focused on the…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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This document is part two of a three part report on employment intermediation. Part one provides an overview of the sector, internationally and nationally, and part three captures the recommendations for further work towards strengthening the sector. In this second…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
Local labour placement project: Overstrand Municipality
The Local Labour Promotion Project (hereafter LLPP) has been developed internally within the Overstrand Municipality which is situated in the Overberg District of the Western Cape Province. The LLPP was developed initially in 2005 to deal with the high level…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
Business health check: Western Cape Bus Operators’ Transport Co-operative Ltd (Siyakhula)
Siyakhula, or the Western Cape Bus Operators’ Transport Cooperative Ltd, operates within the bus sector of the transport industry. A brief description of the sector follows in order to contextualise the operations of the cooperative. The transport, storage and communications…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
01 October 2008
Transport and the Urban Poor
The aim of the paper is to articulate necessary state interventions to improve transport services for the urban poor in South Africa. The paper forms part of a larger study intended to inform a strategic response to the challenges of…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges facing South Africa. Growth has been inadequate, the skills level requirement of new jobs is continually rising, current skills among the workforce are low and inadequate numbers of low end, unskilled jobs are…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
Emergency Relief in Informal Settlements: Proposals for Action
CONTEXT This document is a response to the aspiration of National Treasury to define practical mechanisms which will enable emergency relief for informal settlements and associated urban economy interventions to rapidly occur on a national basis. This aspiration flows largely…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
The State of Land Use Management in South Africa
This paper contributes to the urban component of the forthcoming ‘second economy’1 strategy. The brief called for a reflection on the issue of urban land use management (LUM), and extraction of the implications for the urban poor. For the most…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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Presently, deep-sea vessels fishing Hake under-catch their annual allocation by nearly 10,000 tons and it is claimed that this is because there is no basis on which to target by-catch once the allowable Hake quota has been caught. The following…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
01 September 2008
Linking small and marginalised producers to external markets: New ideas for demand-side measures using value chain analysis
This executive summary is not presented in the usual manner of summarising the findings of each chapter of the report. The complexity and detail covered in the report, and the nuances in the debates, makes such an option impossible. Rather,…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
01 September 2008
Potential for a South African Aquaculture Industry on the Northern Cape's Namaqualand Coast
In the 1980s, aquaculture, or fish farming, was in its infancy, globally. Today, it accounts for close to 50 million tons annually, making up nearly half of all fish products consumed. Of this, Africa has a 1% market share and…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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15 August 2008
Energy-based poverty indicators: Meeting AsgiSA targets
Since 1994 the South African government has identified poverty alleviation as a key policy goal. This objective was formulated under the auspices of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy which has arguably had limited success (Hassan, 2001). In 2004…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
25 January 2008
Community Work Programme
The Community Work Programme (CWP) is a South African government programme that provides an employment safety net. It supplements livelihood strategies by providing a basic level of income security through work. The programme was started to address high unemployment and contributes…
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
24 January 2008
Second Economy Strategy Programme
The 2007 Annual Report of the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (AsgiSA) identified a need to focus on what was then called ‘the second economy’, and on mechanisms to ensure shared growth reaches the margins of the economy.…
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
26 February 2007
Changes in HIV/AIDS knowledge and testing behavior in Africa: How much and for whom?
AIDS has had its most devastating impacts in Africa and the prevalence of the disease continues to rise in most African countries. With a feasible vaccine still years away, reduction in risk behaviors remains the only way to reverse the…
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
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31 January 2007
The impacts of globalisation and liberalisation on inequality
Description In his paper, Albert Berry - professor of economics and director of the Latin American programme at the Centre for International Studies of the University of Toronto - identifies the impacts of globalisation and liberalisation on inequality. He finds…
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Inequality and Economic Inclusion
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