World Employment Social Outlook (2017)
The ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2017 takes stock of the current global labour market situation, assessing the most recent employment developments and forecasting unemployment levels in developed, emerging and developing countries. It also focuses on trends in job quality, paying particular attention to working poverty and vulnerable...
Read MoreMental Health in the Workplace
One in four adults will experience mental health difficulties, yet prejudice and discrimination are significant barriers that deprive people of their dignity. To make dignity in mental health a reality requires every member of society to work together. It requires action in the community and, importantly, in the workplace....
Read MorePremier Rapport Mondial sur les Droits Economiques et Sociaux et Culturels
Ce premier rapport 2016 sur la situation des droits économiques, sociaux et culturels de 42 pays est une initiative de L’Observatoire international sur les droits économiques, sociaux et culturels (ObIDESC). Créé par le Collège Universitaire Henry Dunant, en collaboration avec l’OIDEL et la chaire UNESCO de l’Université de La...
Read MoreGreat Expectations: Is the IMF turning words into action on inequality?
In recent years, the International Monetary Fund has become a global leader in highlighting the inequality crisis; consistently identifying it as a major threat to human progress and prosperity. This is a significant shift from its previously held position that rising inequality was a necessary trade-off for achieving greater...
Read MoreThe Political Economy of Income Distribution: industry level evidence from 14 OECD countries
This article presents an econometric estimation of the determinants of the wage share, using sectoral data for 14 OECD countries for the period 1970- 2014. We present estimations for the wage share of high- and low-skilled workers and within manufacturing and service industries. We augment sectoral data with input-output...
Read MoreAssessing Fiscal Policies from a Human Rights Perspective: Methodological case study on the use of available resources to realize economic, social and cultural rights in Guatemala
In 2009 the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales (ICEFI) produced a report titled Rights or Privileges? Fiscal commitment to the rights to health, education and food in Guatemala. A collaboration between an international human rights organization and a Central American...
Read MoreThe Gendered Costs of Austerity: assessing the IMF’s role in budget cuts which threaten women’s rights
This briefing paper provides a brief assessment of the changing role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF or the Fund) with regards to one key fiscal consolidation measure: contractions in public expenditure. The briefing explores the Fund’s positive and negative influence over public expenditure decisions, and further explains how...
Read MoreMental Health in the Workplace (Executive Summary and Introduction)
Everyone has the right to decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security, and human dignity. For people with mental health problems, achieving this right is particularly challenging. The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) mandate on disability issues is laid down in the ILO Convention concerning Vocational Rehabilitation...
Read MoreInnovations in Care: new concepts, new actors, new policies
The Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality marks an unprecedented advance in the care agenda in terms of the visibility of care as a central dimension of sustainable development. The new international commitment for recognizing, redistributing and reducing unpaid care and domestic work through care policies needs to...
Read MoreAdolescents’ Mental Health: Out of the shadows: Evidence on psychological well-being of 11-15-year-olds from 31 industrialized countries
It is the right time to channel more public investment for comprehensive support of children’s and adolescents’ mental health and well-being. Target 3.4 under Goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Agenda explicitly aims to ‘promote mental health and well-being’, while the WHO Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan for 2013-2020...
Read MoreNo Accident: resilience and the inequality of risk
A new international emphasis on building resilience offers real promise to allow the poorest women and men to cope with, and ultimately thrive, in the face of shocks, stresses, and uncertainty. But only if risk is more equally shared globally and across societies – this will require a major...
Read MoreActive Labour Market Programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean: evidence from a meta analysis
We present a systematic collection and assessment of impact evaluations of active labour market programmes (ALMP) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The paper delineates the strategy to compile a novel meta database and provides a narrative review of 51 studies. Based on these studies, the quantitative analysis...
Read MoreBuilding a Favourable Environment for Institutional Food Procurement Programmes: contributions from Mozambique
The efficiency of institutional food procurement programmes (IFPPs) depends on a series of interconnected conditions to reach their stated goal of linking smallholders with institutional markets and demand (e.g. school meals). These programmes rely on governmental will and the availability of public demand. Furthermore, they require institutional changes and...
Read MoreImplementation of Decentralized Food Procurement Programmes and the Impact of the Policy, Institutional and Legal Enabling Environment: the case of PRONAE and PAA Africa in Mozambique
The development and implementation of an efficient institutional food procurement programme (IFPP —which aims to link smallholder producers to institutional markets and promote development of food supply systems—is not a simple or straightforward task. It requires a series of conditions that must be coordinated and matched together. These conditions...
Read MoreAdapting Fomento to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa
Although one of the hallmarks of an effective development intervention is its successful implementation across a variety of contexts, programme replication is often overlooked. In a recent project, the International Food Policy Research Institute adapted a well-regarded Brazilian agricultural intervention, Fomento, for implementation and evaluation in two African countries,...
Read MoreMainstreaming Graduation into Social Protection Floors (One Pager 324)
With the recent adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), eradicating extreme poverty presents a major challenge for governments worldwide. Despite recent progress, 902 million people remain in extreme poverty. To attain the right to social protection for people living in extreme poverty and, simultaneously, Goal 1,...
Read MoreThe Social Dimensions of Saudi Vision 2030: a paradigm shift (One Pager 361)
This One Pager explains that to address internal development issues in Saudi Arabia such as poverty, vulnerability and inequality, the Vision 2030 plan and its programmes have, inter alia, pointed to a number of specific goals, targets and policy measures to reduce social vulnerability, address labour market issues for women and promote...
Read MoreFrom Expansion to Austerity: challenges and risks of the radical fiscal policy turn in Brazil (One Pager 360)
Brazil, in the period after the great financial crisis of 2007–2008, presents a compelling case study of the interactions between fiscal policy and business cycles. The country is noteworthy not only for being one of the very few that dealt relatively well with the most acute stage of the...
Read MoreBrazilian Fiscal Policy in Perspective: from expansion to austerity
This paper analyses the changes in orientation and composition of Brazilian fiscal policy, focusing on three recent periods and seeking to explore their relationship with economic performance. The first period (2005–2010) was characterised by fiscal expansion, with public investment and redistributive transfers as its main drivers. Economic performance was...
Read MoreBehavioural Insights in Poverty Reduction Policies
This Policy Research Brief presents some elements that should be carefully considered in the design of policies and programmes to overcome poverty, based on evidence from the field of behavioural economics. A growing number of international experiences point to the fact that, in many situations, government policies and programmes...
Read MoreGlobal Goals for Every Child: progress and disparities among children in South Africa.
This report presents an analysis of progress and disparities among children in South Africa. Data show significant progress during the past two decades in areas such as child poverty, child survival, mother to-child transmission of HIV and primary school attendance, among others. These are impressive achievements, but they are...
Read MoreIMF Conditionality and Development Policy Space, 1985-2014
In recent years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has re-emerged as a central actor in global economic governance. Its rhetoric and policies suggest that the organization has radically changed the ways in which it offers financial assistance to countries in economic trouble. We revisit two long-standing controversies: Has the...
Read MoreSocial Return on Investment: accounting for value in the context of implementing Health 2020 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Social return on investment (SROI) is a concept to account for social value when evaluating investments. It goes beyond traditional economic evaluation tools, by considering value produced for multiple stakeholders in all three dimensions of development: economic, social and environmental. This discussion paper reviews the main features of SROI...
Read MoreEconomic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2017: governance and fiscal management
Economic growth in Asia-Pacific economies, although steady, is modest compared with its recent historical trend amid prolonged weak external demand and its ramifications, such as subdued investment and rising trade protectionism. While robust economic growth is not a sufficient condition for achieving broader development goals, the lack of it...
Read MoreBuilding the Future: Children and the Sustainable Development Goals in rich countries
The Sustainable Development Goals have set ambitious targets that apply to rich countries as well as poor. The most telling sign of a nation’s progress towards meeting those goals will be how well it meets the needs of its children. This Report Card offers an assessment of child well-being...
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