Deadline: 15-Mar-23
The Office of the Chief Economist for the South Asia Region of the World Bank, in collaboration with BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) is pleased to announce the 11th South Asia Economic Policy Network conference on Social Progress in South Asia.
While inequality in outcomes (consumption or income) in South Asia is moderate (with Gini coefficients ranging between 0.3 and 0.4), South Asia ranks among the least intergenerationally mobile regions in the world. For example, in South Asia, educational achievement is heavily dependent on the education of one’s parents: less than 9 percent of individuals whose parents’ education level was in the bottom half of the population reach levels of education of the highest educated 25 percent. These ‘sticky’ disparities in education translate into disparities in incomes and are extremely difficult to reduce.
In addition to objective inequality, perceptions or subjective measures of inequality are also important because of their implications for redistributive policies (Bénabou & Tirole, 2006, Gimpelson and Treisman, 2018). As in other parts of the world, perceptions of worsening inequality have been on the rise, even in cases where objective inequality has been stable or decreasing and, correspondingly, demands for corrective action have been increasing. For example, between 2006 and 2012 in India the share of people reporting that incomes should be more equally distributed increased from 33 to 48 percent, according to the World Value Survey data. Rather than misperceiving inequality, subjective views are likely encompassing a broader definition of inequality that correlates not only with objective inequality, but also with poverty and insecurity, as well as with fairness and social mobility, own individual or household situation, and ideology.
Against this backdrop, the World Bank, BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) and the South Asia Economic Policy Network invite papers addressing one of the following (or related) questions:
- What factors drive intergenerational mobility and equality of opportunity in the South Asia region?
- What is the role of social structures such as caste systems, ethnicity, gender, and religious divisions in overall inequality in South Asia?
- What type of public policies and interventions can remove obstacles to intergenerational mobility and thereby promote equality of opportunity across individuals?
- What is the role of social movements/democratic civil society in generating evidence and raising voices?
Eligibility Criteria
- They strongly encourage the submission of internationally publishable academic papers, especially from female researchers from South Asia. The conference on May 9-10 will be in-person and hosted by BIGD (the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with the possibility of connecting online for non-speakers. The sessions will feature paper presentations, a keynote lecture, and a high-level policy panel.
For more information, visit World Bank.