Today, the majority of the world’s extreme poor live in lower middle-income countries. In these countries, the persistence of poverty increasingly reflects unequal access to economic opportunities and low levels of redistribution. Within these countries, poverty is increasingly concentrated in rural communities and among ethnic minorities. And, within households, women and girls often receive a lower share of economic resources. This persists even though most of these countries are electoral democracies with universal suffrage. In this talk, Rohini Pande will explore how institutional form impacts the well-being of the poor and vulnerable when patterns of economic growth do not directly provide these groups adequate economic resources. She will focus on two institutions – the family and the state.
Chair: Arjun Bedi, Professor of Development Economics and Deputy Rector for Research at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Welcome and introduction: Henning Melber, EADI President and Extraordinary Professor at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden
Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center, Yale University. Pande’s research is largely focused on how formal and informal institutions shape power relationships and patterns of economic and political advantage in society, particularly in developing countries. She is interested in the role of public policy in providing the poor and disadvantaged political and economic power, and how notions of economic justice and human rights can help justify and enable such change. Her most recent work focuses on testing innovative ways to make the state more accountable to its citizens, such as strengthening women’s economic and political opportunities, ensuring that environmental regulations reduce harmful emissions, and providing citizens effective means to voice their demand for state services.
Source: European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), 11 June 2021