Equity

The SunDaily, ASEAN 25 March 2016 – Efforts made by Asean to reduce development gaps between the countries is working but these countries must also ensure that inequality does not increase within their own countries, said the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

This article is published in collaboration with IMF Direct. We should have seen a decrease in inequality with globalization, but that’s not what has happened in the last 25 years, according to Nobel Laureate and Harvard Professor Eric Maskin. While there are a number of reasons to care about inequality, he says there is a…

By Gerardo P. Sicat (The Philippine Star), March 2, 2016 Inclusive economic growth achieves sustained and improving quality of employment, rising incomes and productivity and higher standards of living for the country’s citizens. It happens best when the macroeconomic environment is stable, with fiscal, monetary and trade policies in relative balance.

It will take 118 years to close the gender-pay gap in the workplace, the World Economic Forum predicted last year. Despite its documented existence, however, most American workers don’t notice the difference between what men and women make, new research shows.

Most talk of income inequality focuses on the problems of the very poor or the broader socioeconomic implications of rising inequality. What is less well-known is that income inequality makes us all less happy with our lives, even if we’re relatively well-off.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines climbed two notches in this year’s World Economic Forum report measuring gender equality among 145 countries globally and remains the Asia-Pacific region’s highest-ranked country.

They have built their massive fortune through several generations, growing and diversifying their empire while keeping the family in control of the boardroom. They lead conglomerates with combined market value of P1.5 trillion or about 12 percent of the Philippine economy.

MANILA – The richest family in Asia is from South Korea and has a combined wealth of nearly $27 billion, according to Forbes Asia. In its first Asia’s 50 Richest Families list, Forbes Asia named South Korea’s Lee family, who controls the Samsung Group, as the richest business dynasty in the region.

With just about one more month to go before the heads of 21 member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meet in Metro Manila, the atmosphere in the metro is slowly getting into the frenzy of preparations for the two-day event.

On July 14, 1789, the French stormed the Bastille, a medieval fortress-prison in Paris in one of the key moments of the French Revolution. The average people were fed up with the Ancien Régime — aka the monarchy — and they were protesting the vast inequality between themselves and the upper echelon. Fast forward 266…

With the historic Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) now completed, “inclusive growth” remains a high priority on the agenda. While most stakeholders agree it’s an important and compelling part of the dialogue on development, it still remains rather ambiguous as a term. And seemingly when you ask five economists to define the…

FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, June 2015, Vol. 52, No. 2 Montfort Mlachila, René Tapsoba, and Sampawende Tapsoba High growth alone will not improve social conditions Translating strong growth into better living conditions is the holy grail for policymakers in developing economies, many of which have experienced strong economic growth in the past decade. But poverty, inequality,…

Recently, the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Management (DSWD) came under attack. Again. More popularly known as 4Ps or Pantawid (Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program), political commentators seized on a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which stated that close to P19 billion of the 4Ps budget…

Capitalism needs to be saved…according to a doyenne of the investment industry. Lynn Forester de Rothschild, chief executive of family-owned investment holding company E.L. Rothschild, told CNBC that she was on a mission to tackle inequality.

Japan is not immune from the increase in inequality observed in other advanced countries in recent years. Anecdotal evidence suggests that concerns over income inequality have grown among the Japanese population, and the previously widely held notion that ‘all Japanese are middle class’ is a thing of the past. As seen in Figure 1 when…

Social Security’s retirement and disability trust funds are expected to run out in 2033. Americans need bigger retirement nest eggs, there is no doubt about that. More than half of us have saved less than $25,000, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

In 1985 there were only 13 US billionaires in the world. In 2013, the number had increased to 1,426 with a total net worth of US5.4 trillion. Within a generation – about 28 years – the billionaire class has increased by 10,869%.

From the National Economic and Development Authority In a bid to accelerate poverty reduction and promote growth in areas where the poor are found, the NEDA Social Development Committee – Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cluster (SDC-HDPRC) embarked on a concerted effort among the government, private sector, and the poor to ensure that the factors…

In the world’s most dynamic region, family companies occupy the commanding heights of capitalism THE BUSINESS CAPITAL of the Philippines is a part of Manila called Makati. But it might be called Ayala, after the country’s most powerful company, which seems to dominate it. Ayala’s 35-storey headquarters stands in the heart of Makati, in Ayala…

For the past decades, in many countries of the world, the State has slowly retreated amidst the belief that by giving more space to market forces there would be greater economic growth and thus greater economic opportunities. This belief was manifest in the drive to liberalize goods and financial markets in the 1980s and 1990s…

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines’ ultra rich grew in numbers and in terms of wealth last year, according to the Wealth-X and UBS World Ultra Wealth Report 2014.

NIMBYs in the twenty-first century SINCE the publication of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Thomas Piketty has won many plaudits for his work on inequality. The book has so far sold more than 1.5m copies. Its arguments have been praised by Nobel-prize winners and politicians alike. Last year it won the Financial Times’s business book…

From the Department of Social Welfare and Development Sec. Soliman announces during this morning’s briefing that more than 300,000 children of Pantawid Pamilya will graduate from high school this March.

Power from the People FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, March 2015, Vol. 52, No. 1 Florence Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron The decline in unionization in recent decades has fed the rise in incomes at the top Inequality has risen in many advanced economies since the 1980s, largely because of the concentration of incomes at the top…

View the summary here

From the forums in Davos to the protests taking place on the streets: inequality is the defining challenge of our time. It hurts economic growth, denies workers their fair share and robs families of their hopes for a better future.

Women make up over half of our population. Their contribution to society has been incalculable, but disparities clearly remain between the fulfillment of their needs, on the one hand, and the services and protections afforded them by the state, on the other.

Few people in the middle class really understand the mindset of the richest people. After all, if they did, they would be among the top earners as well. We’ve all heard the remarks: Rich people are lucky, rich people had an unfair advantage, rich people are crooks, rich people are selfish, etc. These are mostly…

Building and bolstering labour market institutions is crucial for reducing inequality because market forces alone will not do the job. Apparently, the first step in solving a problem is admitting that one exists. If so, it is welcome that inequality trends are in the spotlight and there is concern about its potential consequences. But now,…