Imagine a 12-year-old girl, named Merah, who aspires to be a female legislator in her country when she grows up but who cannot continue her schooling because there is no secondary school in her community. She and other girls like her are not allowed to shuttle back and forth to neighboring communities to attend school,
New data from the UN, WHO & World Bank shows that the first two decades of the 21st century have seen the largest decline in maternal deaths in human history. Between 2000 and 2020, the annual number of women dying while pregnant or within 42 days of giving birth fell from 447,000 to
It’s time to take action to support women workers in global supply chains
BSR’s HERproject, Gap Inc., P.A.C.E, CARE and Better Work have come together to form a new initiative called RISE: Reimagining Industry to Support Equality in order to scale impact and accelerate equality for women workers in global garment, footwear and home furnishings supply chains.
The
In honor of Women’s History Month, we will feature articles that focus on women this month. This one’s from the Pew Research Center by
The gender gap in pay has remained relatively stable in the United States over the past 20 years or so. In 2022, women earned an
Poverty is most often assessed using objective measures such as absolute and relative income levels. However, different individuals may experience different levels of financial stress at the same income level. Studies have found that the perception of income is only moderately correlated with actual income level and that it is the perception itself that relates
As has been explored in earlier articles on this blog, there are numerous obstacles – political, social, and structural – that prevent the integration of women into the Indian economy on equitable terms and footing with their male counterparts. These issues are deeply rooted in the Indian economy and society more broadly, and addressing them
India is a country where gender inequality has been a crucial issue for generations. Starting at a very young age, girls face a variety of barriers that contribute to unequal economic and educational opportunities. The empowerment of women, both through education of girls and employment of women, has a direct impact on the Indian economy.
This op-ed was originally published in Project Syndicate.
Following the steep economic downturns brought about by COVID-19, policymakers should be asking or rethinking fundamental questions. None is more fundamental than whether rapid economic growth is the best way to drive development and help struggling communities escape poverty.
For good reason, economic growth has long been
What the Poor Think of the Rich
It almost goes without saying, sometimes a person’s mental health problems can lead to poverty. And sometimes mental health problems don’t correlate with poverty. But, often, one comes with the other. The World Health Organization has made it fairly clear that the two interact closely (and correcting one might lead to impacting the other for
Like many people, I am a Mark Twain fan. Therefore, on a recent trip to Hartford, Connecticut I visited his historic home.
Browsing through the gift shop after the tour, the following book caught my eye, “Ignorance, Confidence, and Filthy Rich Friends: The Business Adventures of Mark Twain, Chronic Speculator and Entrepreneur” by Peter Krass. This
The American people are no strangers to the spirit of charitable giving. A phenomenal figure from Charity Navigator shows that as many as 50 percent of American households donated money when the 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti.
This giving accumulated to $1.4 billion. Another example of American goodness was the $1.6 billion donated to victims of the
With COP26, the UN’s climate change conference, on the horizon next year in Glasgow, all eyes are on securing the decarbonisation of the global economy. What this will mean and how it will be achieved will be hotly debated before, during and after the conference.
Thanks to COVID-19, the world has experienced an extraordinary simulation of
While the presidential race has dominated the 2020 election, there are many other important decisions facing American voters. Here are 17 proposals on ballots around the country that, if approved, would go a long way towards reducing economic inequality.
Tax increases on the wealthy and corporations
Food insecurity has been increasing in recent years, and has been further exacerbated in 2020 by the coronavirus. But what can we expect for the next decade? What will current trends in climate change, economic growth, and demographic shifts mean for food security throughout the 2020s? With data from the Food and Agriculture Organization
The risks of algorithmic discrimination and bias have received much attention and scrutiny, and rightly so. Yet there is another more insidious side-effect of our increasingly AI-powered society — the systematic inequality created by the changing nature of work itself. We fear a future where robots take our jobs, but what happens when a significant
Inequality has been seizing ever more of the public’s attention in recent years, reflected everywhere from papal encyclicals and economic tomes by French socialists to technical academic debates and the demotic language of politicians and pundits. The health and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have further elevated
Socioeconomic inequality is one of the most pressing issues American society is grappling with. How does it play out over generations and how have those inequalities led to discrepancies in wealth, especially for people of color?
This year’s Boston University Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) annual Learn More series focused on an exploration of social class, featuring
In 2018, two professors and a Ph.D. candidate in economics from the University of Bonn designed a study to investigate long-term income and wealth inequality in the United States. They were specifically interested in how the financial crisis of 2008 had exacerbated existing inequalities and disproportionately affected
A new Ipsos survey, conducted on behalf of the World Economic Forum,
