Occasional Papers

Gender Equality in Human Development – Measurement Revisited

By: Hsu, Yu-Chieh; Kovacevic, Milorad
2015
Gender equality and women’s empowerment are integral to human development. Since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995, considerable progress has been made, yet in the mean while along with existing shortfalls, new and extensive...Read more

Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges and Successes

By: Martha Chen, Chris Bonner and Françoise Carré
2015
The informal workforce represents more than half of all workers in most developing countries and a significant share of workers in developed countries. This paper summarizes the history and forms of organizing informal workers, providing a timeline of...Read more

Valuing Non-market Work

By: Nancy Folbre
2015
The unpaid time that people devote to the care of family, friends and neighbours clearly contributes to economic living standards, social well-being and the development of human capabilities. The rapid proliferation of nationally representative time-use...Read more

Work as Art: Links between Creative Work and Human Development

By: Patrick Kabanda
2015
Creative work has enhanced human development since early times; similarly, the latter can expand the former. But the links are not automatic. Creative work can be rife with exploitation and gender bias. Writers can advance human welfare, yet illiterate...Read more

Globalization of Production, Work and Human Development: Is a Race to the Bottom Inevitable?

By: Rizwanul Islam
2015
Economic globalization involves trade, capital flows and the movement of labour, and an important element in that process is the globalization of production. With the gradual dismantling of trade barriers, and capital flows becoming easier, globalization...Read more

Globalization of Work

By: Rolph van der Hoeven
2015
The term globalization became popular in the last decade of the 20th century. Although the phenomenon itself is actually much older, with periods of globalization in the 16th and 19th centuries, current globalization is marked by several phenomena at the...Read more

Youth Vulnerabilities in Life Course Transitions

By: Abby Hardgrove, Kirrily Pells, Jo Boyden and Paul Dornan
2014
This paper examines youth vulnerabilities, with a particular emphasis on low- and middle-income countries. It touches on the challenges confronted by young people exposed to extreme, life-threatening circumstances, such as political violence and armed...Read more
Computation of MPI

UNDP’s Multidimensional Poverty Index: Methodology Paper (2014)

By: Kovacevic, Milorad; Calderon, Cecilia
2014
Methodology Paper: 2014 Technical description of the 2014 Multidimensional Poverty Index by Milorad Kovacevic and Cecilia Calderon.Read more
MPI Paper Cover

The Multidimensional Poverty Index: Achievements, Conceptual and Empirical Issues

By: Dotter, Caroline; Klasen, Stephan
2014
The MPI has been an interesting and important effort to provide a household-level multidimensional poverty measure that can compete in depth and coverage with the widely used (and problematic) $1.25 a day income poverty indicator. We strongly suggest...Read more
Fischer-Cover

The Social Value of Employment and the Redistributive Imperative for Development

By: Fischer, Andrew M.
2014
Evaluating the inherently relative and subjective social value of employment needs to be placed within a broader inquiry about the conditions under which a sufficient and sustained perception of social value might be cultivated within particular...Read more