Equity

In a statement delivered to the 2014 Spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, the ILO Director-General warns of rising global unemployment and calls for measures to boost household purchasing power.

One of the most glaringly charged of all social issues concerns income inequality. A deep chasm divides opinion on how to address this issue among those who want to reform society.

The road to sustainable global growth—the policy agenda by Christine Lagarde Managing Director, International Monetary Fund School of Advanced International Studies Washington, DC, April 2, 2014 Webcast of the Speech Webcast As Prepared for Delivery Good morning. I would like to thank Provost Lieberman for his warm introduction. I am also appreciative of Dean Vali…

organization, made news at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year with its report that the world’s 85 richest people own assets with the same value as those owned by the poorer half of the world’s population, or 3.5 billion people (including children). Both groups have $US 1.7 trillion. That’s $20 billion on…

More or Less, the BBC team that investigates numbers and statistics, is often asked to check out claims that readers or listeners to the radio programme find hard to believe.

We are finally reaching a tipping point when it comes to the analysis of gender imbalances in companies. After decades of pointing the finger at women and what they do or don’t do, a chorus of voices is putting the responsibility for gender balance where it belongs: with business leaders.

12 February 2014 – While nearly 1 billion people have escaped extreme poverty in the past 20 years and child and maternal mortality have been cut by almost one half, much more work remains to be done to address inequalities and ensure the rights and dignity of all, especially women and children, top United Nations…

MANILA, Philippines – Managers working in the oil and gas industry are the highest paid employees in the country, according to JobStreet.com’s annual salary report. Managers in the oil and gas industry receive an average monthly salary of P74,297.

Good evening. It is a great honor to be invited to deliver this year’s Dimbleby Lecture, and I would like to thank the BBC and the Dimbleby family for so kindly inviting me—and especially David Dimbleby for his warm words of introduction.

The 85 richest people in the world have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest persons in the world. It’s hard to choose a single appropriate adjective for this statistic – depressing, frustrating, incredulous, and startling. And what would be the public reaction? It has ranged from anger at such inequality, to cynicism with…

Below is the full text of the pastoral exhortation of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines after its bi-annual plenary assembly from January 25 to 27. This copy comes from the website of the CBCP. A story on this also appears on Rappler.

MANILA, Philippines—Malacañang acknowledged on Tuesday that the benefits of a strong economy had not trickled down to the poor, but it vowed to focus on job generation amid a recent survey that found a significant decrease in the quality of life of Filipinos.

The International Labour Organisation has identified a rapid growth of ‘the developing middle class’ – a group earning between $4 and $13 a day When a million people swarmed on to the streets of Brazil last June there was consensus that the protest was a phenomenon of the “new middle class” – squeezed by corruption…

MANILA – The society magazine Town&Country has listed 50 of the most influential and inspiring families in Manila. Leading the list is the Zobel de Ayala family, with a vintage photograph of businessmen brothers Jaime Augusto and Fernando with their mother, Beatriz, on the cover of Town&Country’s latest issue.

MANILA, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) — The lack of jobs and corruption are major factors behind the slow decline in Philippine poverty rate, analysts said Monday.

The Philippines still has the lowest per capita GDP in the Asean-5 despite outpacing the economic growth of its peers last year and in the first half of 2013, the National Statistical Coordination Board confirmed in a report.

In the last of three postings on wealth distribution, we ask who benefits from the relentless rise of the rich. Even in the world of high-flying soccer salaries, the deal announced late this summer between Real Madrid and Welsh player Gareth Bale was eye-popping – £85 million (about $120 million). The 24-year-old will now earn…

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines will continue to see robust growth in 2013 and 2014 based on strong domestic consumption and an increase in investments, but this expansion has yet to generate new jobs or reduce poverty levels, according to an updated Asian Development Bank (ADB) forecast.

BUSINESSMEN and celebrities have again topped the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) list of biggest individual taxpayers, although with significant ranking change for 2012.

(Reuters) – Progress toward achieving gender equality around the globe has stalled in recent years, with women still holding fewer salaried jobs than men and receiving lower wages for their work, the IMF said in a study on Monday.

President Barack Obama’s recent comments about income inequality are providing more fuel to the debate over whether the government can really do anything to reduce it, but perhaps the bigger question is: Do voters really want them to?

Inequality—or the gap between the rich and the poor—in the Philippines could be worse as the household-income surveys are probably not that accurate due to “non-response” from rich respondents, the World Bank said.

The construction business that 47-year-old Alejandro Anareta Jr runs has seen brisk business in recent years, going from eight to 12 people when he first started to about 80 workers now.

MANILA, Philippines—Two public school teachers’ groups have called on the Bureau of Internal Revenue to change “outdated” tax exemption levels that have made them lose a large part of their salaries to taxes.

Public school teachers were not happy that they were made the poster boys and girls of the Department of Finance (DOF), which ran a print ad Wednesday showing that they were making more money than half of the lawyers and doctors in Makati City as what their tax returns showed.

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) yesterday assured the people that the agency is using the most efficient and economical options in distributing cash grants to poor families under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).

When poverty figures and unemployment/underemployment continue to rise even with all the news reports about fresh investments and expansion plans in the country, then there is something wrong with the country’s economic development programs.

LONDON – Nothing lasts forever but a global trend that set in 30 years ago shows no sign of ending: a steep rise in the share of income that goes to profits and a corresponding decline in labor’s slice of the economic pie.

http://www.development.asia/PDF/issue14/devasia14-5.pdf

Evidence-based strategies—the pragmatic pursuit of polices that worked—were at the front and center of developing Asia’s extraordinary success in raising living standards and reducing extreme poverty over the past two decades.