Ghana has experienced rapid economic growth and significant reduction in poverty levels in recent times. However, the reduction in poverty has not translated into a reduction in inequality. Coloumbe and Wodon (2007), and also Cooke et al. (2016) recognise the spatial inequality that exists in the country, manifested particularly in the differences in income levels between the northern and southern parts of Ghana. Evidence by Oduro et al. (2011) and FAO (2012) also point to persistent gender inequalities relating to access to and control of assets as well as access to secured and less vulnerable employment.

According to Corak (2013), economic inequalities limit opportunities for economic and social advancement of the next generation as increased inequalities often alter the opportunities and the incentives for households to invest in the human capital development of their children.

This project is part of the first phase of the Research Facility on Inequalities, coordinated by AFD and funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships over the 2017-2020 period. The first phase of the Facility has led to the conduct of 22 research projects and the publication of around 100 research papers and policy briefs.

This project will draw on and consolidate this evidence-base and then fill some important, policy-relevant gaps that remain. By design, the research program outlined below seeks to address distributional issues in both the bottom half and the top of the distribution. The work program recognises from the outset that there are several dimensions of human development and wellbeing, and progress in some measures might be accompanied by deterioration in others. It recognises that economic growth does not necessarily lead to equitable outcomes – both poverty and inequality have self-reinforcing characteristics that are hard to counter.

The research project will be developed across three work streams: 

• The diagnostic study on inequality in Ghana will in essence aim to produce a report on inequality in Ghana. It will explore the census data and include an analysis of spatial inequality using the most recent poverty maps of Ghana. In view of this the team will be working with the Ghana Statistical Service to produce this report. This report will be based on a common framework to be developed by the hub of the ACEIR network.
• The researchers will take advantage of the two rounds of the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSPS) which are a result of collaboration between Yale University and ISSER. Using this data they intend to study how economic inequality has changed in Ghana over the period 2010 to 2014 (Wave 1 & 2 respectively) and what explains the changes. In particular, they will try to analyse the changing dynamics from a spatial, gender (of household head and at the individual levels) and ethnicity perspective.
• A paper on is the relationship between economic inequalities and inequalities in education opportunities in the context of Ghana. Even though enrolment rates in Ghana are generally very high, the inputs for good educational outcomes, such as the quality of school infrastructure, books and other educational materials are not equally available to pupils due to economic inequality. This in turn will have implications for educational outcomes and consequently future welfare status of these pupils as Mayer (2010) and Corak (2013) suggest. The researchers involved in this project hope to use this study to contribute to a better understanding of the nature and extent of this relationship. The study will use the two waves of the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSPS).

Find the presentation of the research paper "Exploring the dynamics of micro- level consumption inequality in Ghana" by Nkechi Owoo (University of Ghana, ACEIR) during the sixth webinar of the Research Facility on Inequalities: 

You may find the research papers and the Inequality Diagnostics here:

- Understanding the relationship between consumption inequality, inequality of opportunity and education outcomes in Ghana

- Exploring the dynamics of micro-level consumption inequality in Ghana

- Inequality Diagnostics for Ghana 

Contact:

Anda David, Research Officer, AFD

Over the last twenty years, poverty has declined in Kenya. The poverty rate has fallen from 52% of the population in 1997 to 36% of the population in 2015. However, in 2015 income inequality was still large with more than half of total wealth controlled by the 20% richest of the population. An assessment of inequality causes could help design and implement policies to eliminate it. In particular, policies with well-designed redistributive fiscal components could play a substantial role in reducing income inequality.

This project is part of the first phase of the Research Facility on Inequalities, coordinated by AFD and funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships over the 2017-2020 period. The first phase of the Facility has led to the conduct of 22 research projects and the publication of around 100 research papers and policy briefs.

The proposed research program has two objectives: 

• Documentation of inequality and poverty trends in Kenya since independence and diagnosis of their main drivers;
• Assessment of the impact of fiscal policies on inequalities in Kenya.

First, the Kenyan National Household Budget Surveys will be used to analyse poverty and inequality trends over a long period of time. These datasets will also be used to assess which factors perpetuate inequalities in the country.

Then, the Commitment to Equity methodology (Lustig and Higgins, 2017) will be used to conduct an in-depth assessment of the impact of fiscal policies on inequalities and poverty. It would enable to analyse who mostly pays taxes and who benefits from transfers and public spending in the country and what fiscal policy instruments have the greatest impact on inequality reduction.

The research project will result in two research papers, as well as workshops and policy briefs to disseminate the results to policymakers.

You may find the research paper here:

• Fiscal incidence, inequality and poverty in Kenya: a CEQ assessment
• Inequality trends and diagnostics in Kenya 2020

You may find the policy briefs here:

• Inequality in Kenya : trends and policy responses
• Fiscal policies in Kenya : Effects on poverty and inequalities
  
   

Contact:

Hélène Ehrhart, Research Officer, AFD

Anda David, Research Officer, AFD

Professor Germano Mwabu, University of Nairobi

 

The recent release of the Sustainable Development Goals reinforces the central role of health as a key element of human development, calling for further investments in health as part of a concerted effort to overcome poverty and inequalities worldwide. Specifically, SDG3 reiterates the importance of investing in policies that favor Universal Health Coverage (UHC), defined in relation to access to quality care and financial protection against the cost of illness. The urge to sustain and increase investments in health as part of an overall development policy is accompanied by the need to ensure that the investments made produce benefits for all groups in a society, contributing to reducing existing inequities in access and health status between the poor and the least poor. Evidence on the equity benefit of recent UHC reforms (ranging from user fee removal to results-based financing) is still limited. Similarly, evidence is lacking on whether investments in these recent reforms have altered spending on health at a national health, increasing the distributional incidence of this spending to benefit the poor rather than the least poor, as indicted by prior research.

This project is part of the first phase of the Research Facility on Inequalities, coordinated by AFD and funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships over the 2017-2020 period. The first phase of the Facility has led to the conduct of 22 research projects and the publication of around 100 research papers and policy briefs.

This project aims at assessing whether the distributional incidence of total and public spending on health has become more equitable over time, especially as a function of introducing UHC-specific reforms. The research objective is purposely set not only to describe the inequities in access and in health outcomes that may persist in spite of UHC-specific reforms, but also to explore more explicitly the link between the financial investments made and the benefits accrued across socio-economic groups. This choice stems from a wish to generate analytical evidence on the equity impact of the investments made in health, whether these investments are made by African countries themselves or with support from their development partners. The investigators trust that this evidence is much needed to direct and inform future investments in health. Moreover, keeping in mind this wish to inform policy making in a pragmatic manner, they plan to appraise their findings in the light of the different social and political circumstances that have shaped the emergence and implementation of the specific UHC policies and investments under analysis.

The project expands the framework proposed by McIntyre and Ataguba published in 2011 and conducts a quasi-longitudinal benefit incidence analyses to assess the distributional incidence of total, public, and UHC-specific spending (such as user fee removal policies, targeted subsidies, or results-based financing) across all countries over time, measured both at the individual beneficiary level and at the district/health facility level. Traditionally, tables and concentration curves and indexes have been used to display the results of the Benefit Incidence Analysis (BIA). In addition to this traditional approach, the investigators plan to generate maps based on the BIA results to illustrate spatial inequities in the distributional incidence of spending on health.

Furthermore, they will appraise findings in the light of the specific circumstances within which policy decisions on health have been reached in each country, to be able to explain, from a qualitative point of view, what policy elements might have contributed to generate greater or smaller equity.

You may find the research papers here:

• Estimating the distributional incidence of healthcare spending on curative health services in Sub-Saharan Africa: Benefit incidence analysis in Burkina Faso, Malawi and Zambia
• Estimating the distributional incidence of healthcare spending on maternal health services in Sub-Saharan Africa: Benefit incidence analysis in Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Zambia
• Distributional effects of healthcare spending : lessons from Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Zambia
• Assessing inequalities in healthcare spending in Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Zambia: data and methods 
• Inequalities in Maternal Healthcare spending: Evidence from Burkina Faso
• Inequalities in healthcare spending on curative services: evidence from Burkina Faso
• Inequalities in maternal healthcare spending: evidence from Zambia
• Inequalities in healthcare spending on curative services: evidence from Zambia
• Inequalities in maternal healthcare spending: evidence from Malawi
• Inequalities in healthcare spending on curative services: evidence from Malawi

Contact:

Cecilia Poggi, Research Officer, AFD

Social-protection schemes have become a popular form of intervention in developing countries both by governments and within the international-development community, as they are seen as a tool to combat the adverse impacts of natural and economic crises. However, the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these programs remains mixed. Notwithstanding the wealth of interest from policy makers, donors, and researchers, there is a paucity of evidence about the distributional incidence of these programs. Existing work has often not been able to establish longer-run effects of public-works programs on poverty and inequality. In addition, there is a lack of focus on horizontal and spatial inequalities. This research project intends to fill this evidence gap.

This project is part of the first phase of the Research Facility on Inequalities, coordinated by AFD and funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships over the 2017-2020 period. The first phase of the Facility has led to the conduct of 22 research projects and the publication of around 100 research papers and policy briefs.

This research project proposes to investigate the distributional impact of three large-scale social-protection schemes - the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India, and the Juntos conditional cash-transfer program in Peru. These programs were chosen because they are large-scale projects involving a coordinated effort by governments, donors, local authorities and individual households. The programs cover three countries with diverse social, cultural, political, and economic contexts from which to draw lessons for future policy initiatives.

The researchers propose to go beyond measuring the direct intended impacts of the programs and rather focus on their indirect, and not necessarily intended, consequences. In particular, they first consider the effect of these programs on the income and wealth of program participant households over both the shorter- and longer-run. They then turn to the programs’ impact on horizontal and spatial inequalities, as well as their effect on household social relations and the distribution of resources within households.

Unlike traditional benefit-incidence studies, the researchers exploit policy differences across time and space, both within and across the countries, to provide causal estimates of the social-policy impacts. They use the Young Lives cohort study that collected data both pre-and post-program implementation between 2002 and 2014 in all three countries. They exploit a number of aspects of the Young Lives cohort study and the roll-out of the social-protection schemes in each country to produce estimates that deal with non-random program placement.

The researchers planned to begin by conducting an individual-specific pre- and post-program comparison of income and wealth. Then to exploit the staggered rollout of the social-protection programs across districts to causally identify the impact of the schemes on a set of indicators. They intend to compare changes in districts that received the program earlier to changes in districts that received the program later in a difference-in-differences approach. Last but not least, they will further assess the impact of the program on individual outcomes, taking advantage of administrative boundaries to separate treated and control areas in a geographic regression discontinuity.

You may find the research papers here :

• Social protection and inequality: Evidence from Ethiopia, India and Peru
• Social protection and multidimensional poverty: Lessons from Ethiopia, India and Peru 
• Social protection and intrahousehold resource allocation: Evidence from three large-scale programs 

You may find the policy briefs here:

• Policy Dialogues No. 1 | Social Protection: The Impact on Inequality in Ethiopia, India, and Peru
• Policy Dialogues No. 2 | Social Protection: The Impact on Multidimensional Poverty in Ethiopia, India, and Peru
• Policy Dialogues No. 3 | Social protection: impact on household resource allocation and child undernutrition

Contact:

Conchita d’Ambrosio, Professor of Economics, Université du Luxembourg

Cecilia Poggi, Research Officer, AFD

 

An upturn in growth in Côte d'Ivoire since 2012 has been observed, with average growth rates in real GDP surpassing 8%. However, this renewed vitality in the economy has not yet been felt by all of Ivorian society. The level of poverty remains high (46.3%), as does that of inequalities. (The Gini index for 2015 is estimated at 0.402 by the National Statistics Institute and 0.415 by the World Bank). We can thus see that, while the Ivorian economy seems to be doing well, a very large proportion of its population is excluded from the benefits of this economic upturn. 

This project is part of the first phase of the Research Facility on Inequalities, coordinated by AFD and funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships over the 2017-2020 period. The first phase of the Facility has led to the conduct of 22 research projects and the publication of around 100 research papers and policy briefs.

This research program on inequalities in Côte d’Ivoire will first take stock of the inequalities there, and then it will carry out scientific studies on three themes:

• the impact of shocks on inequalities;
• the inequalities of access to education and to quality health services;
• the impacts of public policies on inequalities. 

The study will also focus on the perception of inequalities by Ivorians.

 

The research on inequalities will take stock of the Ivorian situation and will review the initiatives of public authorities to fight monetary and non-monetary inequalities. Using the data available on the living conditions of the households, the main indicators for the measurement of inequalities will be calculated and a representation of the spatial distribution of the inequalities will be carried out in the form of maps. Subsequently, an analysis will be carried out on inequalities in opportunities (measured by the effect on opportunities from parents’ education, their occupation, place of birth, and gender) with regard to access to property and assets, as well as on the sources and the perceptions of these inequalities. 

The study on the shocks will be based on statistical analysis and modeling methods (in particular, a linear regression model and a panel data model will be applied). Access to basic services will be covered mainly with the help of micro-econometric models. The study of the effects of public policies will be considered with a microsimulated inter-industry model, then by impact evaluation models.

 

The project is expected to produce a review describing the state of public interventions designed to eradicate inequalities in Côte d'Ivoire. The study on the perception of inequalities will also make it possible to measure the extent to which households are conscious of the need for greater social justice and identify possible measures at the individual level. This research will also help identify the mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of inequalities and will propose policy measures for social mobility in Côte d'Ivoire. 

This research will give rise to conferences and workshops. Various publications are also expected: a report, policy briefs, and research articles.

You may find the report and the research papers linked to this project here (in French) :

• Etat des lieux des inégalités en Côte d'Ivoire
• D'où proviennent les inégalités en Côte d'Ivoire? 
• Analyse de l'impact de la crise de 2002 sur les inégalités en Côte d'Ivoire 
• Impacts des dépenses publiques sur les inégalités en Côte d'Ivoire: le cas des secteurs sociaux

You may find the policy briefs linked to this projet here (in French) :

• Impacts de la crise militaro-politique de 2002 sur les inégalités en Côte d’Ivoire
• D’où proviennent les inégalités sociales en Côte d’Ivoire ?
• Les effets des dépenses publiques sociales sur les inégalités en Côte d’Ivoire

Contacts:

Linda Zanfini, Research Officer, AFD.

Anda David, Research Officer, AFD.