Working Paper 83 - Are African Countries Richer Than They Are Developed? A Multidimensional Analysis of Well-Being

Sen’s capability approach inspired a new conception of development and succeeded in the Human Development Index (HDI). On the basis of HDI critics, we propose to enlarge the number of variables and we use 9 indicators of Standard of Living and 9 indicators of Quality of Life that allows measuring two components of well-being and that can be divided into various fields (health, education, environment, etc.) to provide a finest measurement of poverty. The empirical results for 170 countries in 2000 are based on two different multidimensional analysis of poverty, the Totally Fuzzy Analysis and the Factorial Analysis of Correspondences. The conclusions depend on the considered method but are generally similar. The paper focuses on the African continent and shows that some countries are “richer” than “developed” or inversely. The correlation matrix between different indicators reveals that education is a key variable for defining poverty. Comparisons extended with HDI classification and GDP per capita classification prove that monetary poverty is related with all other dimensions of poverty and that the HDI takes into account its essential dimension even if it can’t be used to reduce some specific aspects as our original index.

Working Paper 123 - Labor Market Dynamics in Tunisia: The Issue of Youth Unemployment

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the youth labor market in Tunisia using unique labor force survey data from 2005 to 2007 that include a longitudinal component. It first shows that sustained economic growth will reduce youth unemployment over the next few years. Second, forecasts indicate that the growth of private sector services has the highest potential to reduce youth unemployment. Third, the analysis of labor market characteristics reveals that young graduates experience long unemployment as they cue for high-skill jobs. Moreover, the public sector remains the main provider of employment opportunities for many graduates, in particular for women.

Labor Market Dynamics in Tunisia: The Issue of Youth Unemployment

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the youth labor market in Tunisia using unique labor force survey data from 2005 to 2007 that include a longitudinal component. It first shows that sustained economic growth will reduce youth unemployment over the next few years. Second, forecasts indicate that the growth of private sector services has the highest potential to reduce youth unemployment. Third, the analysis of labor market characteristics reveals that young graduates experience long unemployment as they cue for high-skill jobs. Moreover, the public sector remains the main provider of employment opportunities for many graduates, in particular for women.labor market, Tunisia, unemployment, youth

Working Paper 115 - Analyzing Pro-Poor Growth in Southern Africa: Lessons from Mauritius and South Africa

Based on the methodology of Ravallionand Chen (2003), Kakwani and Pernia(2000) and Kakwani, Khandker and Son(2003) and using household survey data,we analyze poverty, inequality and pro-poorchanges in South Africa over the period1995-2005 and in Mauritius over theperiod 2001-2006. Conditions are verydifferent in these two countries. SouthAfrica is one of the least equal countries inthe developing world while inequality inMauritius is relatively low in comparison toother African countries. Similarly, using areference threshold of USD 3 a day, wefind that poverty headcount was initiallyaround 42% in South Africa and 6% inMauritius. Moreover, in addition to theseinitial differences, the two countries haveexperienced very different pro-poor growthpaths. Temporal differences reveal thatinequalities have increased significantly inSouth Africa over the period and that thepoverty headcount in 2005 would havebeen around 10 percentage points lowerwithout this strong adverse redistributioneffect. South African growth has been antipoorrelatively speaking. Conversely,growth was absolutely pro-poor inMauritius over the period 2001-2006.Deeper analysis is conducted across areasof residence (urban and rural) andaccording to educational achievements(some schooling versus no schooling) andgender. A comparison between Mauritiusand South Africa allows for a betterunderstanding of both growth andredistribution effects on poverty and fordrawing some policy recommendationstowards reducing poverty in thesecountries.

Working Paper 111 - Assessing Absolute and Relative Pro-Poor Growth: An Application to the MENA Region

This paper proposes a multidimensional test for a partial ordering over absolute and relative pro-poor judgements. It also investigates whether poverty comparisons can be made over classes of indices that incorporate both absolute and relative poverty standards. Besides being robust to whether pro-poor judgements should be absolute or relative, the partial ordering is also robust to choosing over a class of weights to aggregate the impact of growth on the poor, as well as over ranges of absolute and relative poverty lines. The test is applied to recent distributional changes in nine Middle-Eastern and North-African (MENA) countries that have witnessed different impacts of growth in the last two decades.