Deadline: 5-May-23

The Members of the Strategic Committee of the EU-AFD Research Facility on Inequalities jointly launch the call for research proposals “Advancing the inequality agenda through collaborative research: identifying the priorities for a Global Team Europe approach on inequalities”.

This proposal intends to fund support to advance the evidence base and understanding of different inequality dimensions.

This call for research proposals represents an output of the Strategic Committee. The projects that will be selected will therefore be conducted under the supervision of its members.

Objective

• This proposal is for funding support to advance the evidence base and understanding of the following four topics:
  • Covid-19 and inequality: While there is mounting evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic has increased socioeconomic inequality, there is still a need to understand the exact channels of impact and what role the policy response has played in different contexts. To what extent and under which conditions were social policies effective in mitigating the impact of the pandemic on inequalities, and in particular on income inequality? What are the lessons learnt that could inform future emergency response programs ? E.g. Were distributional consequences of programs considered? How can emergency programs contribute to reducing inequalities?
  • Patterns of growth, inequality and poverty: The poverty-inequality-growth nexus is being revisited to integrate aspects of climate change in order to better respond to the current ecological emergency. The looming energy and food crises are further constraints on the tradition development models. How can they assess policies that address all these dimensions while taking into account the new challenges? How do redistribution development strategies look like in the 21st century? What is a sustainable pattern of growth and how could a postgrowth trajectory look like in a low-income country? What type of investments have a higher impact in terms of reducing inequality? What are the implications for development cooperation?
  • Assessing the impact of policies and projects on inequality: They see an increase in the number of development programs and interventions that focus on inequality reduction, or that integrate it as an indirect objective. Nonetheless, little progress has been made in monitoring and analyzing their impact. Is it feasible to measure the impact of these policies and projects on inequalities? Under which conditions? How do they measure their contribution to the inequality reduction? What realistic design for these policies and projects to ensure their impact on inequality?
  • Measuring inequality beyond non-monetary dimensions: It is increasingly important to go beyond non-monetary dimensions of inequality as a “new generation of inequalities” is emerging, primarily around digitalisation and climate change. These new dynamics are proving to be determinant factors on people’s ability to seize opportunities in the 21st century (e.g. working and thriving in a knowledge economy, and coping with environmental degradation impacts). How could such a macro-level measurement of inequality look like? How could it include the multidimensionality of inequality? How could it support the regular reviews of the SDGs?

Funding Information

• Each proposal should be for a maximum of EUR 15.000 (all taxes included) and for a period of maximum one year since the signature of the contract (with the Agence française de développement as the implementing agency of the EU-AFD Research Facility on Inequalites).

Eligibility Criteria

• Researchers should have significant expertise in the topic being researched.
• Submissions from researchers primarily affiliated to institutions in low and middle income countries are particularly encouraged.

Selection Criteria

• A refereeing committee will evaluate all proposals by the following criteria:
  • The value added from the project in terms of contributing to existing knowledge and possibilities for acting upon inequalities,
  • The methodological soundness and the rigour of the analysis,
  • The context and policy relevance of the findings.

Please note that they will take a portfolio approach to the selection of proposals in order to ensure a diversity of focal areas and methodologies.

For more information, visit AFD.