What is 4IR?

Led by developed nations, the world is already embracing the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). 4IR refers to an era of industrialization characterized by the digitization of the manufacturing sector.

The major components of 4IR include artificial intelligence (AI), big data, the internet of things (IoT), blockchain technology, human-machine interaction, virtual reality, 3D printing, and robotics.

Although considered disruptive, 4IR has benefited major world economies. It has promoted efficiency and quality in production and significantly reduced production costs.

African countries have started to embrace 4IR. For instance, South Africa is implementing AI and 3D printing in medicine, IoT in the supply of goods to consumers, and drone technology to deliver medicine to hardship areas.

The influence of 4IR on disabled people in the workplace

4IR technologies affect jobs in several ways:

• job creation, due to the development of new market niches, such as e-commerce.
• job elimination/substitution, due to automation practices that could make low- and middle-skilled jobs obsolete as machines take over tasks that were previously performed by humans.
• job redefinition/transformation, where new styles of work, such as remote working are embraced.

A high number of workers in Africa provide cheap labor along the industrial and manufacturing value chain. These workers will be significantly affected by 4IR, especially those with disabilities who already face higher unemployment rates.

4IR can further create a divide between highly skilled and non-skilled individuals. Notably, African people with disabilities are more likely than non-disabled people to offer unskilled labor, be self-employed in informal employment, or be in formal employment on a part-time basis. Therefore, they possess inadequate advanced skills needed for 4IR and research shows that they can be easily driven out of employment as they will be less competitive. This is critical as over 80 million individuals in Africa are disabled due to mental health issues, birth defects, diseases or physical impairments.

African people with disabilities have not fully exploited their potential to contribute to 4IR through skills and talents such as critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, and cognitive flexibility. These skills can also be used in the remote work environment, an area that has not been fully explored by this group. This limits them from fully engaging in employment that is geared towards 4IR.

While a number of African countries, such as Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Egypt, have developed and manufactured assistive technologies and devices, they are often too expensive for people with disabilities. This makes it difficult for disabled people to benefit from 4IR technologies that will help them in the workplace. Employers implementing 4IR also have minimal knowledge of how to work with people with disabilities, which further excludes them from significantly contributing to the transition to 4IR.

Exploring the potential of 4IR for people with disabilities

Researchers have pointed out that limited data on African people with disabilities makes it challenging to formulate inclusive 4IR-related policies that cater for their needs. There is, thus, a need to conduct extensive research and collect data on the needs of people with disabilities in the workplace. This will help to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for change that can be explored to help inform 4IR-related policies and advance 4IR technologies that are inclusive in nature. 

Disabled people’s talents, such as creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence can be explored to enable them gain and sustain employment amidst 4IR. These skills are important for the successful transition to 4IR. It is also important to educate and empower people with disabilities about their potential and the technologies that can enable them to take up competitive roles in the job market given the changes brought by 4IR.

Supporting people with disabilities with a shift to remote work will provide flexible working hours that allow them to practice their special skills and explore their strengths. Remote working will also enable them to comfortably deliver on their tasks without traveling to the office. This is especially important in Africa where public transport providers have implemented minimal strategies to cater for the needs of disabled people.

Affordable assistive applications and devices will further support the inclusion of people with disabilities in the 4IR workplace. Public-private partnerships for purchasing these technologies and devices will improve their affordability. Where possible, employers should purchase assistive technologies to ensure inclusivity and fairness in the workplace.

Finally, employers implementing 4IR are advised to formulate internal processes, regulations and guidelines on how to work with disabled people amidst the digitization of workplaces. This will enhance their incorporation in 4IR workplaces.

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Higher education can advance inclusive development and foster a transformed society. To help overcome entrenched inequalities in South Africa, the government provides financial support to students for whom university would otherwise be unaffordable. This support offers students access to higher education – and all the economic benefits it brings for both the individual and society at large.

The financial aid system has undergone recent changes that bring a new set of complex but critical considerations. This article explores these potential issues that could change students’ incentives for going to university, as well as universities’ incentives to improve student performance and graduation rates. These changes have the potential to impede social mobility and inclusive development.

We identify a lack of evidence about whether the current funding system is (cost-) effectively promoting upward mobility. To fill this gap, we suggest that data that tracks students from university entrance to employment is necessary to inform decisions that can ensure higher education fulfils its social and economic potential.

How is higher education funded in South Africa?

Universities in South Africa receive direct government funding through subsidies that are linked to research, student enrolment and student graduation rates. They also receive funds indirectly through the tuition and accommodation fees of students at the university who are supported by the government’s National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). This program enables students to attend university by fully covering their tuition and accommodation fees. Students also receive allowances for living and transport expenses, as well as study materials.

Until recently, universities received much more money through direct subsidies than indirectly through NSFAS. Following a costly and contentious expansion of NSFAS in 2018, however, universities now receive roughly the same amount from both sources, with total funding showing a decline in 2023 (see Figure 1).

A shift in funding sources, towards NSFAS and away from subsidies, may not be problematic if total finances to institutions were to remain unchanged. In reality, however, it introduces two potential ramifications. The first relates to the fact that around a quarter of the total NSFAS allocation shown in Figure 1 goes directly to students through allowances (own estimate for 2019), rather than to institutions. With constrained budgetary resources, this shift could reduce institutions’ income and affect their ability to function sustainably.

Figure 1: Nominal growth in funding for universities and students (2011–2023)

Source: University State Budgets – Public Report; DHET March 2023 in presentation by Diane Parker and Thandi Lewin, SAAIR 2023.

The second ramification is that the changing structure of funding could potentially shift universities’ focus towards enrolling more students, to capture funding from tuition and accommodation fees, and reduce emphasis on improving student performance and graduation rates. This could have profound consequences for upward mobility. University graduates have much better chances of securing well-paid work in South Africa than non-graduates (including those who drop out of university).

Social spending for social mobility?

South Africa offers social welfare payments for children and older adults, but there is a gap in protection for the working age population. Unemployment rates are high among this group, and especially among younger adults (34.3% of people aged 15–24 were not in Employment, Education or Training in Quarter 2 of 2023).

NSFAS acts as a form of social protection for members of this age group who attend post-secondary education. For example, NSFAS continued to provide allowances to students who remained enrolled during the COVID-19 pandemic. At 1500 Rand (R) per month, this likely represented an important source of income to students’ households. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, like other social grants, NSFAS allowances are shared with students’ families. As a value comparison, the Social Relief of Distress Grant, introduced during the pandemic, is just R350 per month – although it reaches many more people.

If viewed in this way, NSFAS is an expensive ‘social protection mechanism’ available to the very select few who can access higher education. Nonetheless, NSFAS expenditure growth is projected to be 11% for 2019–2024), exceeding growth in university subsidies (3.9%), inflation (5%), social grant expenditure (6%), and basic education (2.5%).

Projected rises in enrolments and increasing demand for NSFAS mean that it is more important than ever for policymakers to understand the returns to NSFAS, and the cost-effectiveness of these large government investments.

Two further, essential considerations arise. Does the potential for upward mobility and the consequent social and economic gains justify the growth in NSFAS in our current financially strained environment? Furthermore, will the way in which funding is currently being apportioned, especially under the current NSFAS policy, lead to the desired graduation and labour market benefits?

Figure 2: Labour market absorption for 2015 NSFAS graduates, disaggregated by institution

Source: Adapted from Wildschut et al. (2020). Transformation, stratification and higher education: exploring the absorption into employment of public financial aid beneficiaries across the South African higher education system.

Is NSFAS (cost-) effective?

Evidence on graduate destinations is limited in South Africa. An exception is a study that matches tax data and NSFAS students who graduated under the previous NSFAS model. The incentive structure was different under the previous scheme and updated evidence is urgently required, but the study does show how important data is for understanding the impact of the sector on social mobility. For example, Figure 2 shows that among the 2015 cohort of NSFAS-funded graduates, positively, over half were in formal sector employment in 2017. That said, institutions with the highest share of NSFAS students face some of the lowest employment prospects. Relatedly, dropout among NSFAS students is high in some of the institutions with better employment rates.

On the one hand, dropout by students who are unlikely to graduate can be viewed, purely from a budgetary perspective, as a good thing for public coffers. On the other hand, NSFAS could shift the costs vs. benefits of enrolling in university because it offers social protection against a backdrop of high unemployment. In other words, does NSFAS make poorer students more likely to enrol in university, and potentially into programs not aligned with the skills needs of the economy – even if they know they may not graduate?  

Another intricacy that policymakers would do well to consider, however, is dropout among students who are likely to succeed but cannot continue their studies because they have reached their maximum number of years of funding. They represent a substantial public investment and impede the sector’s ability to foster upward mobility, at a substantial cost.

A call for evidence

Policymakers face contention between the supportive role of NSFAS, and its possible distortionary effects on student and university performance. Universities face shrinking subsidies, alongside pressures to ensure student success and employability. Ultimately, a better understanding of whether the current funding system is (cost-) effectively promoting upward mobility crucially requires comprehensive monitoring of system-wide student success – from the day they enrol through to their graduation and employment. This data exists in silos but is not (yet) linked in the way that is urgently needed to inform decision making.

What’s more, this evidence can be used to help universities collaborate with each other to save overall costs across the sector. This will be key as financial pressures rise. An example of this strategic collaboration already exists in the Siyaphumelela (`we succeed’) Network Initiative. This aims to expand evidence-based student success efforts by building on existing strengths, sharing capacity throughout the sector, and serving institutions based on their needs and abilities.

This article is published in collaboration with the International Economic Associations’ Women in Leadership in Economics initiative, which aims to enhance the role of women in economics through research, building partnerships, and amplifying voices. 

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The last time comprehensive household data was collected in Niger, it was 2012. The results were chilling. Nine in 10 people were found to be living in multidimensional poverty – a measure of poverty that includes deprivations beyond income. This was the highest incidence of multidimensional poverty in the world at the time.

Of these 9-in-10 faces, 685,000 were amongst the poorest in the world, simultaneously experiencing every single type of deprivation tracked by the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index: under-nutrition, infant mortality, a lack of education, no electricity, unsafe water and cooking fuel, substandard housing, inadequate sanitation, and a lack of assets.

The data gave the world a clear window to the stark reality of a nation battling severe poverty. It spotlighted injustice and those who most required support.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and poverty

When 193 countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015, they made a collective promise to the world’s most vulnerable people: no-one will be left behind. And the agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognises poverty – in all its forms – as the greatest global challenge.

SDG 1, No Poverty, aims to halve the proportion of people living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions. The ambition is clear and admirable.

But more than seven years have drifted since the SDGs were adopted, and the picture of multidimensional poverty in Niger remains frozen in time. We cannot say with certainty whether poverty’s vice-like grip has loosened or tightened since 2012. What is known, however, is that Niger has not been spared the battering storms of the COVID-19 pandemic nor rising violence within and along its borders. And climate disasters have added weight to the already over-burdened shoulders of its people who predominantly rely on livestock herding and farming for their livelihoods.

Simply put, we cannot tell if Niger’s people are falling even further behind. And it is not just Niger. Nineteen countries that are home to more than 20% of the world’s population (1.77 billion) lack multidimensional poverty data for the SDG era. These span Yemen to Sudan, Barbados to Ukraine. Not all are poor: data is missing for China – a beacon of contemporary poverty reduction. The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index – an annually updated report conducted by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the United Nations Development Programme – provides important insights to inform and accelerate efforts to end poverty in all its forms. In 2023, the report excludes South Sudan and Burkina Faso because their data is too old. But poverty still devastates lives in all these countries – and requires visibility, as well as redress.

Why we must keep poverty data up-to-date

The COVID-19 pandemic threw another spanner in the works by delaying many household surveys. The Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, led by UNICEF, the Demographic and Health Surveys supported by USAID, and national surveys, are critical tools in the global development landscape. They provide the data needed to inform, evaluate, and advocate for interventions that improve the well-being of the most vulnerable.

The delays of such surveys mean that we do not have a clear picture of how the pandemic impacted poverty. In a world pledged to “leave no one behind” these lacunas of data make the promise hollow, as an advisory group to the UN asserts that data is the very “raw material for accountability”.

This dearth of up-to-date data is not inconsequential. It is a chasm that swallows whole the realities of those most in need of the world’s attention. It renders people unseen and unheard. And, thus, they are overlooked and left behind.

In Sub-Saharan Africa – where the majority of the world’s poor live – data is scarcest. On the African continent, Christopher Yeh and his Stanford colleagues calculate that, at current rates of data collection, a household will appear in a representative survey less than one time every 1,000 years. At the same time, the wealth of billionaires is meticulously tracked and updated by Forbes every five minutes, a stark contrast that underscores our misplaced priorities. “One of the most fundamental inequalities”, according to a UN report, “is between those who are counted and those who are not.”

Beyond accountability, data is vital for effective interventions that address poverty. Up-to-date poverty data, gleaned through representative surveys or censuses, is like a guiding light for policymakers navigating through a foggy overpass.

In 2011, Colombia reimagined its National Multidimensional Poverty Index into an annually updated map that streamlined programs and funnelled resources to where they are needed most. This map allows policymakers to see who is poor – based on aspects like age, gender, and location – and how they are poor, based on dimensions like education, health, and living standards. In 2010, 30.4% of Colombians were multidimensionally poor. Fast-forward to 2022, that figure had shrunk to 13.9%.

But without up-to-date data, even well-intentioned policies can veer off course. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government offered a monthly allotment of rice and pulses to all ration card holders. 814 million people qualified for the emergency relief. But the basis for calculating who was eligible was partly based on a decade-old census. Millions of poor Indians potentially missed out on emergency rations. Data, then, is important for both accountability to people in poverty, and to effectively address poverty.

With backs against the wall, the UN meets in September 2023 to mark the midpoint of the SDGs. This key event is set to revitalise and renew worldwide commitment towards the agenda. And when countries renew this commitment, we must remember to honour the core promise of the agenda: no-one gets left behind. Through updated data, we must bring the unseen and unheard into sharp focus and relentlessly support policies that address poverty in all its interlinked forms. Only then can we make good on our promise.

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Women around the world face deeply entrenched barriers to equality with men. As we discussed in an earlier blog that focuses on Nigeria and Vietnam, women are ill-served by public services and their unpaid care work is underestimated. Their opportunities for paid work are very different to men’s.

The law should be an instrument for enacting justice and overcoming these inequalities. But it can occasionally become a tool of marginalization that exacerbates them.

How is the law contributing to gender inequality in Nigeria and Vietnam? We look at the evidence.

Male dominated legislature and the impact of activism

Due to the male-dominated legislature in Nigeria, women face a significant challenge in representation and recognition. Political science scholar Makama affirms that in Nigeria, patriarchy elevates men to positions of authority in both society and families. The result is that men have more political and economic opportunities including inheritance rights. 

It is noteworthy that advocacy efforts, such as protests, digital activism and community mobilization might gradually be producing modest outcomes. One example is the passage of the “Rivers State Prohibition of the Curtailment of Women’s Right to Share in Family Property Law No. 2 of 2022” law. This piece of legislation upholds the rights of women in Rivers State Nigeria to a share in the ownership of their family’s property.

In response to heightened violence against women and girls in the country, an example of how public services have not met women’s needs well, advocacy efforts have led to the domestication of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act (VAPP) in 34 states across Nigeria. VAPP is a comprehensive piece of legislation geared towards curbing the menace of gender-based violence in the country. Yet despite the adoption of VAPP across several states, prosecution of perpetrators remains low, which emphasizes the need not just for adoption of existing laws but also implementation.

Regarding the legal framework to address gender inequality, Vietnam has shown significant improvements, but there are still challenges. Vietnam’s first Law on Gender Equality was enacted in 2006, considering forms of discrimination against women, especially ethnic minority and rural women. Since then, several other policies and measures have been adopted, including the National Strategy on Gender Equality for the period 2021–30, which aims to promote Vietnam’s gender equality and women entrepreneurship.

But some provisions of the 2006 Law are not fully consistent with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other treaties adopted by the Vietnamese government. For example, the Law has yet to consider indirect discrimination. Besides, there are considerable gaps between the 2006 Law and Vietnam’s current laws, such as the Law on Marriage and Family, the Law on Prevention and Control of Domestic Violence, the Law on Social Insurance, and so on.

For example, the Law on Organization of Local Administration and the Law on Organization of the National Assembly have not provided enough measures to enhance women’s participation in decision-making bodies. There are still certain obstacles in the national legal framework that have hindered Vietnam’s progress on gender equality and women empowerment, which require further effort to tackle.

Final thoughts 

The examples presented above indicate that women in the Global South still experience inequality in different forms in their families, communities, and the countries in which they live. Research and practical experience indicate that gender disparity affects a number of different facets of life, which taken together could further erode women’s status. The rights of women and girls must therefore be addressed through a multi-sectoral strategy, with a deliberate emphasis on the efficient implementation of legislation and appropriate funding of gender equality activities. Furthermore, development initiatives must take into account the diversity of problems in each region, each country, and each community to create transformational solutions and programmes that reflect the realities of the people and bring women closer to gender balance and full equality.

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The latest report by UN Women suggests that achieving gender equality (Sustainable Development Goal 5) is still a long way off and may not be achieved in the next 300 years. This reality has far-reaching consequences for women globally and is especially devastating for women in the Global South, who have already faced significant barriers to full participation in the development process. In the words of Latin American scholar Anna Suzina, women may feature in developmental conversations, but they have “unequal capacity to intervene in the configuration of social order”.

There are many ways in which women in the global South are being left out of the development process. Some include being excluded from public services and economic opportunities, being marginalized in politics, and experiencing violence and exploitation. 

The lack of gender-responsive public services (GRPS) and the underestimation of unpaid care work (UCW) done by women 

The last decade has underscored the need for improved public services that are gender-responsive in both quantity and quality. But in developing and less developed countries, public funding for GRPS is inadequate and ineffective.

In Nigeria, the increased kidnapping of school children, forced marriage, early pregnancy, and Covid-19 have exacerbated inequalities for girls and exposed the lack of the publicly funded infrastructure needed to eliminate these inequalities. According to UNICEF, 18.5 million Nigerian children are out-of-school and 60% of them are girls. The brazen attacks by insurgents in Northern Nigeria have significantly affected children’s education. Keeping girls learning, especially in emergencies, is critical to bridge the gap. 

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the failure of GRPS has contributed to placing the unpaid care and domestic work burden on women and girls, due to their patriarchal gender roles. The social norms with regard to women’s roles in UCW is rooted deeply in Vietnamese society and passed on to the next generation.

The inadequate financial budget assigned to public services, such as early childcare, healthcare, geriatric nursing, education,  housing, employment, and social security has caused women to spend much more time and effort to take care of their families, children, the sick, and the elderly. In remote and mountainous areas, ethnic minority women and girls have to walk further to collect water and fuel.

Photo 1. Vietnamese ethnic minority women and girls in mountainous areas carrying water tanks donated by a company (Source: Vietnam Youth Union) 

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there is a lower share of men taking part in domestic work and those who do spend less time than women (as shown in Figure 1). Nearly 20% of men are not involved in these activities at all. Furthermore, development studies suggest that, “the failure to count unpaid work underpinned prevailing structures of gender inequality and contributed to the perpetuation of inadequate development strategies”.

Although often invisible, the contribution of UCW is tangible. But Vietnamese women’s contribution has not been well recognized within families and communities. The lack of acknowledgment by men about women’s contribution, together with the subjective evaluation without any specific measurement of UCW, have been deepening the patriarchal social prejudice and gender inequality. In Vietnam, UCW primarily done by women has not been counted in GDP’s formulation. 

Figure 1: Share of Vietnamese men and women in UCW (2019) (Source: Viet Nam’s Labour Force Survey) 

The lack of employment equality 

An analysis of the role of women in economic development p   p    rovides an insight into the disparities affecting women’s engagement in the labor force. In Nigeria, despite having more women in the small-scale trade sector, cultural patterns oppose women’s entry into modern trade and prioritize men in employment opportunities. For example, men are four times as likely to hold executive roles, and they are also twice as likely to secure employment, according to the International Finance Corporation.

Similarly, an analysis of employment of men and women at the age of 20 shows marked differences. For example, 4% of men in rural Nigeria are married at the age of 20, in contrast with 50% of women. For women within this category, this trend further reduces their employment prospects as the cultural norm is for married women to take on more household duties, further compounding the inequalities facing girls and women.

In Vietnam, the situation seems better with the high participation of women in the labor market. Both sexes could have equal access to employment and women have comparable working hours with men. There has been progressive elimination of gender gaps in educational achievements as well.

But these indicators are not representative enough of gender-equal opportunity. Vietnamese women face multiple and persistent gender inequalities. They have to carry a disproportionate double burden: be both ‘good at national tasks and housework’.

There is also a common notion recorded in both rural and urban areas that men are breadwinners while women are only secondary earners. Moreover, Vietnamese women have lower quality employment than men. They are over-represented in vulnerable, lower-paid segments and part-time jobs, especially subsistence agriculture and domestic workers.

According to the General Statistics Office, women are twice as likely as men to become domestic workers. Besides, women workers tend to earn less and they are also less represented in decision-making positions. In 2019, while women made up nearly half of the labor force, only 24.7% took management and leadership roles, according to the ILO.

Figure 2 illustrates that while there has been an increase in the paid employment rate and a reduction in the vulnerable employment rate of both sexes over time, there has been a lack of a corresponding decrease in the gender gap. 

Figure 2: Prevalence of paid employment and vulnerable employment by gender in Vietnam (2010–2019)(Source: Viet Nam’s Labour Force Survey) 

With such glaring disparities, what steps can be taken by stakeholders and policy-makers to work towards to the goal of gender parity? In the second and final part of this series, we examine current laws and policies in Nigeria and Vietnam that may be contributing to worsening inequality for women and girls.

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Public childcare centers that provide learning and socialization opportunities for children are a favorite policy option for many governments. They are also popular with parents, because they provide free full-time daycare for their offspring, allowing them more time for work or other household activities.

But such centers are expensive to build and run, and so they are seldom offered for free at a large scale, even in high-income countries. Assessing the impact of providing public daycare services is therefore an important objective for research to inform policy.

An assessment can include a number of angles, including caregivers’ labor market outcomes and children’s later learning progression at school. But it is also valuable to measure the effects of daycare attendance on children’s economic and social preferences since for many of them, it is their first experience of socialization beyond the immediate family.

This relates to a more general question about the origin of preferences and whether they are malleable. For example, men and women often have different preferences, which could at least partly explain gender differences in choices and outcomes.

Some would argue that if gender gaps in outcomes are driven by gender differences in preferences, then there is no need to address them. On the other hand, boys and girls may develop different preferences because they are raised differently from very early in their lives. There is growing interest in understanding the origins of gender differences in preferences – and one way to advance our understanding of individual differences in decision-making is to study the development of decision-making in young children.

Daycare in Rio de Janeiro

In 2007, the local government of the city of Rio de Janeiro used a lottery system to determine admissions into oversubscribed public free-of-charge daycare centers. While the lottery was mainly designed to assign daycare spots when they were oversubscribed, the mechanism created variation that makes it possible to identify the effects of daycare enrollment in the context of a large city in a middle-income country.

There was no difference in terms of gender, age, racial and socio-economic background among the children who won or lost the lottery. But winning the lottery in 2007 significantly influenced daycare enrollment in 2008 – and enrollment in 2008 affected enrollment in subsequent years.

Compliance was imperfect in the sense that some lottery winners may not have fully attended daycare and some lottery losers may have nevertheless attended (either because their particular daycare was not oversubscribed or because their parents enrolled them in a private option). But winning the lottery translated into a 34% increase in time in daycare up to the age of 4, allowing identification of the effects of daycare attendance.

In a recent study, we made use of this variation in daycare enrollment to investigate the role of early education in children’s economic preferences and decision-making abilities. Nine years after those who were admitted started attending daycare, we surveyed about 2,100 of the applicants. We administered four experiments with incentives to measure their economic preferences as well as the quality of their decision-making.

Overall, we find that daycare attendance did not affect economic preferences and had no impact on decision-making abilities. But there is one exception: daycare attendance seems to have changed children’s social preferences, particularly those of girls.

How do we measure social preferences?

Children played a sharing task using a tablet. In the task, they had to choose between two different allocations; each allocation paid a number of tokens to the participant, and a number of tokens to another anonymous child (the tokens could be exchanged for toys at the end of the survey).

For example, the children would have to choose between the allocation on the left and the one on the right in the screenshot of the tablet in Figure 1. In this case, the participant chose between the equitable allocation on the left in which the two children get the same (three tokens for the participant and three for the other child) and the allocation on the right in which she received less than the other child (four for the participant, but six for the other child).

Figure 1: Snapshot of the sharing task with an example of disadvantageous inequality. In blue (‘Leandro’) are the tokens assigned to the participating child, while in red (‘Outra Criança – Other Child’) are the tokens assigned to the other anonymous child.

Note that the allocation on the right of the screen improves the allocation of both children but introduces inequality. It represents a case of ‘disadvantageous inequality’ where the participant gets two tokens less than the other child. We infer that a participant exhibits ‘aversion to disadvantageous inequality’ if she chooses the allocation on the left, ‘paying’ one token to ensure that she is not left behind.

The effects of daycare attendance on social preferences

We used the lottery system implemented in Rio de Janeiro to estimate the ‘intent-to-treat’ effects of daycare attendance. The top panel of Figure 2 shows no effect on boys’ choices (in blue). In contrast, the bottom panel shows that daycare attendance increased girls’ aversion to disadvantageous inequality (in pink).

Treatment girls were substantially more likely than control girls to choose the equitable allocation, forgoing one token for themselves and ‘taking away’ three tokens from the other child to ensure they would not be left behind. Among control children, control boys exhibited a greater aversion to being left behind than control girls did. The effects of daycare attendance are large enough to close this gap: treatment girls were as averse to disadvantageous inequality as control boys.

Figure 2: Intent-to-treat effects of daycare attendance on preferences expressed in the sharing task illustrated in Figure 1. Boys on the top panel in blue, girls on the bottom panel in pink. The markers represent effect sizes. The brackets correspond to 95% confidence intervals.

A natural question to ask is why the daycare lottery changed girls’ preferences but not those of boys. One possible explanation is that it changed girls’ perceptions of gender roles, including about how accommodating they are expected to be, and how acceptable it is for girls to be more concerned with their own wellbeing and less concerned with the wellbeing of others.

In any case, the evidence from the Rio de Janeiro daycare experiment suggests that gender differences in social preferences, such as attitudes toward inequality, are malleable and can be influenced by the socialization process experienced by children early in their lives.

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Social mobility – usually understood as movement from a lower to a higher level of education or occupational status, or from a lower to a higher social class or income group – is the great hope of economic development. For many, it is also the mantra of a good society. Whether there is social mobility in society is a question of crucial policy importance in emerging economies, which have undergone modernization as they have opened up to the world economy.

Over the past few decades, several developing countries have experienced rapid economic growth alongside rising inequality. How has growth affected the life chances of children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds? And has the increase in inequality led to lower social mobility, as suggested by the Great Gatsby Curve?

Among developing countries, India had strong economic growth all through the 2000s, alongside a sharp increase in inequality. This is a country with large social cleavages and inequalities in opportunities for socially disadvantaged groups such as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and religious minorities, especially compared with forward castes and the majority religious community (Hindus). At the same time, since independence in 1947, the Indian government has enacted radical affirmative action policies, providing quotas in state and central legislatures, village governments, the civil service, and government-sponsored educational institutions to SCs and STs.

Has economic growth and the affirmative action programs led to increased prospects for the social mobility of SCs, STs, and Muslims? Or has the increase in inequality entrenched existing inequities and lessened the likelihood of social mobility for India’s socially disadvantaged groups?

An emerging body of research is examining educational and occupational mobility in India. An early study finds progressive occupational mobility by birth cohort, meaning that mobility for some disadvantaged groups often exceeds mobility for more advantaged groups. For example, the researchers find that mobility among SCs and STs born during the period 1965-84 exceeds mobility among higher castes. This implies that conditions are right for furthering equality between groups – at least in occupational status.

For educational mobility, the same study finds a decrease in educational persistence – that is, more social mobility. More recent work on educational mobility also finds that SCs and STs have had upward educational mobility compared with forward castes, while for Muslims, educational mobility has steadily declined from the 1960s to the present.

However, both studies focus on the association in socio-economic status between adjacent generations, measuring how close the correlation is between the status of parents and that of their children. This approach implicitly assumes that the effect of earlier generations on their offspring’s socio-economic status is indirect.

But it is important to examine beyond adjacent generations and to look at multigenerational mobility. The study of multigenerational mobility enables us to understand the extent to which inequality of opportunity has reduced in a country over time.

In our recent work, we examine educational and occupational mobility for over 25,000 grandfather-father-son triads in the context of India, a country that has witnessed significant economic, political, and social change, including the onset of radical economic reforms in 1991, and the launch of major affirmative action programs for the SCs, STs, and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

Figure 1: Multigenerational Educational Mobility

Figure 1 shows educational mobility among grandfather-father-son (G1-G2-G3) triads. We can see that a significant portion of the grandfathers (G1) were illiterate, but that many of their sons (the fathers, G2) had upward educational mobility. This upward mobility trend in education level continues between G2 and G3, but the overall rate is much lower.

Figure 2: Multigenerational Occupational Mobility

From Figure 2, for occupational mobility, we can see that in the first generation, some fathers’ sons were upwardly mobile to professional and clerical jobs, but that a majority of them had persistent or downward mobility – to casual workers on agricultural estates and other informal or primary sectors. This trend persists between G2 and G3, but the magnitude is comparatively smaller.

Moving beyond the descriptive analysis, we use an innovative double-difference regression method, where we estimate grandfather-father-son triad regressions, with generations 1 and 2 pooled together, and the first ‘difference’ being a time dummy for the third generation and the second ‘difference’ being the ‘treatment’ dummy for social group or religion or location.

Overall, we find that multigenerational mobility increased over time for education, but not for occupation. Educational mobility is higher for the G2-G3 pair than for the G1-G2 pair, which means that the existing rate of upward mobility increased.

In contrast, there is little difference in the rate of occupational mobility between the G2-G3 and G1-G2 pairs. This means that in India, the rate of upward mobility by occupational status is historically low – much lower than the same rate for educational mobility – and persistently so. This finding opens up many questions, particularly about what drives this low rate in such a rapidly developing country.

We also find clear evidence of a ‘grandfather effect’. A grandfather’s occupational and educational status has an effect on their grandson’s occupational and educational status, independent of the father’s status.

Further, the findings by social group suggest a murky picture of social mobility in India. We find that multigenerational mobility for Muslims in education and occupation has decreased in comparison with that of Hindus. While multigenerational educational mobility for SCs/STs and OBCs has increased relative to General Castes, we do not find evidence of increased occupational mobility over the three generations for SCs/STs/OBCs relative to General Castes.

The finding that even in the period of rapid economic growth, we have not observed increased social mobility among socially disadvantaged groups relative to the more advantaged groups suggests that a rising tide does not lift all boats.

Policies are needed to act on the entrenched social and economic inequities in opportunity that affect SCs, STs, and Muslims in India. Our findings suggest that affirmative action programs cannot by themselves address the deep inequities that India’s socially disadvantaged groups face, and that the government must enact a broader set of policies that address the causes of the lack of social mobility among India’s poorest citizens.

Policies that promote better provision of schooling and infrastructure in areas where these social groups are located, and higher quality job creation, especially in the lower ends of the occupational structure, may be good options.

This article is part of a series organized in partnership with UNU-WIDER. Timothy Shipp, Communications Associate at UNU-WIDER and Rahul Lahoti, Research Associate at UNU-WIDER joined the reviewing panel for this series.

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As 2022 draws to an end, the GlobalDev team has looked back at your favorite articles of the year. Below are the most read articles in English, French and Spanish!

Child marriage in Pakistan: evidence from three development programs

This year, our most read article in English shed light on the causes, consequences, and potential ways to tackle child marriage in Pakistan, where, according to a survey conducted in 2017, nearly 40% of women had been married before the age of 18.

Albena Sotirova and her colleagues explain that ‘although fines and punishments exist, laws on child marriage have little impact as they are not well enforced.’ Social norms, religion but also economic reasons are among the main causes of child marriage in Sindh and Punjab, where it is usually the father and grandfather who arrange marriages.

Although according to the authors’ research, ‘young people in both Sindh and Punjab speak positively about some aspects of early marriage’, child marriage has been proven to cause mental and physical harm to girls, and also to have negative effects on boys.

Married girls typically become pregnant early, which leads to them dropping out of school. In case they do not conceive early or do not give birth to a son, they also face the risk of being treated harshly by their in-laws, ‘to the extent of not being allowed to speak in extreme cases.’ In parallel, ‘young men – who are seen as responsible for supporting their wives financially – often struggle to secure a stable income, leading to household poverty and stress. This in turn can increase the chances of domestic violence.’

The authors conclude that child marriage should be addressed through a multi-dimensional approach, seeking not only to help at-risk girls but also to influence social norms as well as leaders and decision-makers responsible for enforcing laws.

Entrepreneurship and development economics: convergence for better policy

In 2022, our French-speaking audience was most interested in the role of entrepreneurship in development. In their article, Jolanda Hessels and Wim Naudé argue that the persistence of weak entrepreneurship policies might be caused by the fact that ‘the positive impact of entrepreneurs is overestimated, and their detrimental effect underestimated.’

As they explain, these biases might exist due to the absence of a unified scientific approach that studies the intersection between entrepreneurship economics and development economics. Nonetheless, to determine the impact of entrepreneurship on development, they identify five areas in which the two fields are converging:

They first talk about externalities: ‘unintended consequences or actions not captured in the market price of the product or service provided.’ They argue that the more externalities an entrepreneur creates the more they drive development.

Second, they explain that the role of entrepreneurs varies across different stages of development. They give the example of Asia, where, in order to catch up with the first industrial revolution in Western Europe, entrepreneurs ‘identified, copied, and adapted existing technologies.’ Once rapid growth was underway, the most prosperous countries shifted to ‘innovation at the frontiers of knowledge.’

Third, they talk about the importance of ‘entrepreneurial ability’ in the transition to an innovation-driven economy.

Fourth, the authors pinpoint the central role of institutions in facilitating development. They give the example of the West in which the growth take-off ‘was accompanied by facilitating institutions (…) that encouraged and rewarded risk-taking by entrepreneurs.’

Last but not least, ‘there has been a recognition in entrepreneurship research that development is about more than monetary wealth and that subjective wellbeing matters as well.’

The authors conclude on the importance of these convergences in creating a better environment for start-ups, a more effective allocation of funds, and ‘better support of the kind of entrepreneurship that generates positive externalities.’

Migration: evidence from Mexico of the effects on sending countries

Our most read article in Spanish – and also our most read article overall – shifts the discussion about migration away from the effects it has on receiving countries to the impact on sending countries. Taking the example of Mexico, one of the largest sending countries in the world, Emily Conover and her colleagues explore the effects of the sex imbalance resulting from migration on labor markets.

As they explain, migrants from Mexico tend to be ‘men of working age with an average level of schooling.’ The large number of men leaving causes delay in marriage and sometimes leads to women never marrying or having kids. ‘This in turn could lead to women extending their time in schooling and university, and going into the labor market.’ Migration hence ‘affects the labor market, education, marriage, and fertility outcomes in the sending country.’

Looking back and forward

This year, more and more of you have been following our articles, we thank you very much for your continuous support and wish you a happy new year. 2023 will mark the fifth anniversary of the blog and we are preparing some surprises for the occasion – stay tuned!

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As developing countries rapidly urbanize, poverty is becoming an increasingly urban phenomenon. Across the Global South, most urban residents work in the informal economy in low-paying, volatile positions that provide limited opportunities for upward mobility. And they live in overcrowded slums, which provide inadequate shelter and infrastructure, and leave residents at risk of displacement (Figure 1).

Most slum residents remain stuck in poverty and place for generations. Alleviating urban poverty and vulnerability poses one of the key development challenges of our time.

Figure 1. Slums span a wide range of (inadequate) living conditions

It is worth remembering that slums and slum-like conditions were also widespread in today’s rich cities, such as London, New York, and Paris (Figure 2). These conditions did not automatically go away on account of industrial-led economic development.

Rather, these and other Western cities and countries enacted intensive policy and legal reforms focused on labor and housing protections, investment in public health and education, and a host of other public interventions. The combination of urban job opportunities and government investments in human capital and social safety net programs helped to facilitate broad-based upward mobility.

Figure 2. Slums over time

Photo by Charles Marville, Paris, 1872 (left) and by author, Bengaluru, 2018 (right)

Comparing contemporary and historical urbanization

Analogous government investments and regulations are noticeably absent in developing countries today, despite being even more crucial. There are at least two key differences between contemporary and historical urbanization trends that exacerbate the persistence of urban poverty today.

First, there are far more ‘struggling’ cities now experiencing rapid population growth alongside bleak economic progress. Many of the urban poor in these cities face unemployment and under-employment rather than transformative opportunities.

Second, today’s urban poor experience pervasive informalities that leave them disconnected from institutional supports. The vast majority of urban residents in the Global South work informally: up to 75% in Latin America, 85% in South Asia, and 97% in sub-Saharan Africa. This precludes them from access to many government safety net programs. Without property rights, many slum residents struggle to access financial markets and infrastructure provision linked to formal titles.

Moreover, large numbers of people in slums lack even the most basic city-based identity papers, and their entire urban existence remains unacknowledged by the state. These extreme institutional disconnections leave slum residents particularly vulnerable to shocks – a reality that has been laid bare by the devastating impacts of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Policy action for today’s urban slums

We do not expect to see transformative gains for the billion-plus living in urban slums without a great deal of planned policy support. To this end, three main approaches are necessary.

Documenting numbers and needs

First, far more evidence is needed, both to document the number of people living in slums and to understand their specific policy needs. At present, slums are severely undercounted and poorly understood.

Misconceptions abound that slum residents, rather than being persistently stuck on the urban margins, are largely transient, either circular migrants planning to return to their rural roots or poor migrants who quickly benefit from the urban economy and eventually upgrade to formal housing. Undercounting and misperceptions contribute to the severe lack of political will to invest in this vulnerable population.

Creating opportunities for skills, jobs, and connections

Second, interventions must focus on creating opportunities for urban residents. This requires investments in education and vocational training, as well as job creation and accessibility.

The spread of global technology has expanded the range of tasks that can be automated, resulting in a rising educational premium; but the average slum resident today has not completed secondary school. Governments and businesses should also be more innovative about creating new jobs that can take advantage of mid-level skills, which are currently underused.

Beyond focusing on skill development and job creation, planners and policy-makers should consider how local contextual factors create barriers to job access. Evidence from Medellin, Colombia, shows how investing in affordable transport that connects slums on the urban periphery to parts of the city that are economically vibrant can have important consequences for labor market access.

Recognizing the need for greater formalization of work, housing, and public services

Third, any policy solution that recognizes the dignity of slum-dwellers needs to include efforts to formalize their right to housing, access to social services, and employment contracts. Without a secure home or an adequate safety net, slum residents remain extremely vulnerable to downward shocks that threaten to erase any potential gains. Many remain dependent on the discretion of politicians to access crucial government supports.

Progressive formalization of various dimensions of informality – in terms of work contracts, tenancy agreements, identity papers, labor and health insurance, and so on – is required in today’s slums, just as these protections were required in the past.

To promote inclusive urban development, policy-makers and practitioners must recognize the vast number living in slums, support prospects for upward mobility, and mitigate risks of downward descents. Without these efforts, many of the most vulnerable poor will remain stuck on the margins of the cities they help build.

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The 2022 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on the state of food security and nutrition in the world states that there should be no more ‘lingering doubts that the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.’

According to an FAO-World Food Programme report, 222 million people in 53 countries/territories are expected to face acute food insecurity and be in need of urgent assistance over the period from October 2022 to January 2023. The Covid-19 pandemic coupled with the war in Ukraine have exacerbated problems of access and availability of food around the world, and the distance from reaching the “zero hunger” targets of the Sustainable Development Goals seems to be growing every year.

At the end of this week, 16 October, it is World Food Day 2022, commemorating the founding of the FAO in 1945. We are marking the occasion by looking back at articles we have published on food insecurity. Here is what we have learned.

Innovations in food systems: the key to human and planetary health

In his article ‘Innovations in food systems: the key to human and planetary health’, Shenggen Fan, former director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), talks about the role of innovation in reshaping food systems for better nutrition, health, inclusion, and sustainability.

As he explains, ‘food systems use nearly 85% of the world’s fresh water, and almost a quarter of all global land is degraded. Food systems contribute around one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions. Yet food systems have the unique potential to fix many of these problems – and they can also help to meet broader development goals, such as employment and women’s empowerment.’

Fan argues that innovations in technologies, policies, and institutions will be critical for preserving human and planetary health. He gives examples of several technological innovations that have proven their efficiency in improving food systems, but he insists on the importance of considering the impact of these technologies on smallholders, children’s nutrition, and employment. Fan also talks about policy innovations that prioritize humans, health, and the environment.

Lastly, he mentions institutional innovations that will give space for technologies and policies to have a considerable impact on food systems. He concludes his piece calling for global cooperation as key to disseminating these different types of innovations.

The role of youth in transforming food systems in Africa

Technological innovations are also the focus of Olga Mapanje and Rodney Mushongachiware’s article, ‘The role of youth in transforming food systems in Africa’. In particular, they point to the important role of tech-savvy youth in transforming food systems in Africa, as agricultural solutions increasingly lie in digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence.

‘Despite initiatives to promote agricultural production and the engagement of youth in agriculture, agricultural production in the African continent remains low compared with the rest of the world.’ This is exacerbated by the limited adoption of modern technologies, which can be countered by greater participation of young people in food systems, as they are more inclined to adopt new technologies.

The authors call on African policy-makers to incorporate youth aspirations into future endeavors and interventions in the agricultural sector as well as to ‘address the challenges associated with access to resources, such as land and credit.’

Diversity for farm resilience and food security: evidence from Finland

In their article ‘Diversity for farm resilience and food security: evidence from Finland’. Helena Kahiluoto and Janne Kaseva talk about a different kind of innovation. They debunk a persistent myth, explaining that the paradigm of streamlined efficiency has spread the mistaken belief that diversity in farming leads to inefficiency. In a study on Finnish farms, they prove that ‘farms with greater diversity of land use – more diverse crops – are no less efficient in their resource use than farms with less diverse crops.’

The authors conclude that ‘careless specialization’ has made ‘food supply unnecessarily fragile in our era of global ecological and social instability’, calling for changes in farming practices for the sake of sustainability and resilience.

Food security in megacities: climate migration and informal food systems

In his article, ‘Food security in megacities: climate migration and informal food systems’, Mohammad Moniruzzaman makes the case for a policy innovation: he calls on governments of megacities to consider ‘informal provisioning’ as part of the solution to reduce food insecurity and to integrate informal food systems into the urban food system.

He cites the example of the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, which each year receives half a million migrants moving from coastal and rural areas. ‘As a result, the number of people living in urban slums without access to basic services and amenities has increased by 60% since 2000. The informal food systems of Dhaka have become a dense and diverse network of informal markets, mobile traders, hawkers, retailers, street vendors, suppliers, and transporters.’

These systems make food more accessible and affordable to low-income migrants: one study shows that in Dhaka, ‘every second city dweller depends on these informal markets for their food procurement.’ For Moniruzzaman, integrating informal systems is key to making ‘megacities more resilient to the combined impacts of climate change and rapid population growth.’

Lessons from a life in food policy

Finally, we cannot talk about food security on GlobalDev without mentioning Shenggen Fan’s article ‘Lessons from a life in food policy’. In this piece, which we highly recommend you read, Fan shares the lessons he has learnt after working for more than 40 years in the field of food policy (including 10 years as the director general of IFPRI).

Here are the main lessons he learned from his experience:

• Start with the local context.
• Improve access to well-functioning markets.
• Work in partnership.
• Food alone is not enough.
• Use a food systems lens.

Food security was a big concern during the pandemic. Here are some articles that we have published:

Covid-19 and the food crisis in Bangladesh: a proposal for action, by Asad Islam and Firoz Ahmad 

Food insecurity during Covid-19, by Firoz Ahmad, Asad Islam, Debayan Pakrashi, Tabassum Rahman, and Abu Siddique

Panic could cause a global food crisis under Covid-19, by Shenggen Fan

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