Rethinking progress towards reducing inequalities in developing countries, while integrating climate change

Efforts of countries to reduce inequalities (SDG10) can be measured after incorporating their economic resources, but also after examining the effects of climate change — temperature and rainfall — on this global effort. On average, countries have exerted only 50 percent of their effort in reducing income inequality, but this effort differs from region to region. Sub Saharan Africa recorded the least average effort of 39 percent, reminding that the potential and scope for improvement to reduce income inequality differs across SSA countries. The findings show that introducing temperature and precipitation in the frontier model reduced the effort of countries in several regions. In the SSA sample, the negative effect of temperature on effort was significant whilst that of rainfall was negligible.