IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/gigawp/266.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

SMARTer Indicators for Decent Work in a Post-2015 Development Agenda: A Discussion and a Proposal

Author

Listed:
  • Ostermeier, Martin
  • Linde, Sarah
  • Lay, Jann
  • Prediger, Sebastian

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the design of a post-2015 development framework by proposing indicators to monitor employment outcomes. Our analysis of the current MDG employment indicators shows that measurement problems, the inappropriate use of aggregate statistics, ambiguous interpretability, and assumptions that often do not hold true in the context of developing countries are major shortcomings of the current indicators. Based on this critique, we develop a new set of indicators for productive employment and decent work. We propose four indicators: (i) the growth of labor value added per worker, (ii) the working poverty rate, (iii) (a) the share of workers receiving less than an absolute labor income and (b) the share of workers receiving less than 60 percent of the median labor income. We demonstrate the empirical application of these indicators using the country cases of Uganda and Peru.

Suggested Citation

  • Ostermeier, Martin & Linde, Sarah & Lay, Jann & Prediger, Sebastian, 2015. "SMARTer Indicators for Decent Work in a Post-2015 Development Agenda: A Discussion and a Proposal," GIGA Working Papers 266, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:gigawp:266
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/107630/1/819362506.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus Deaton, 2005. "ERRATUM: Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 395-395, May.
    2. Brendan Burchell & Kirsten Sehnbruch & Agnieszka Piasna & Nurjk Agloni, 2014. "The quality of employment and decent work: definitions, methodologies, and ongoing debates," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 38(2), pages 459-477.
    3. Shaohua Chen & Martin Ravallion, 2010. "The Developing World is Poorer than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1577-1625.
    4. Azevedo, Joao Pedro & Inchauste, Gabriela & Olivieri, Sergio & Saavedra, Jaime & Winkler, Hernan, 2013. "Is labor income responsible for poverty reduction ? a decomposition approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6414, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tomas Hellebrandt & Paolo Mauro, 2015. "The Future of Worldwide Income Distribution," Working Paper Series WP15-7, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    2. Francesco Ravazzolo & Joaquin Vespignani, 2020. "World steel production: A new monthly indicator of global real economic activity," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(2), pages 743-766, May.
    3. Branko Milanovic, 2022. "After the Financial Crisis: The Evolution of the Global Income Distribution Between 2008 and 2013," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(1), pages 43-73, March.
    4. Milanovic, Branko, 2009. "Global inequality recalculated: The effect of new 2005 PPP estimates on global inequality," MPRA Paper 16538, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Moatsos Michail, 2016. "Global Absolute Poverty: Behind the Veil of Dollars," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-28, December.
    6. repec:grz:wpaper:2012-07 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Francesco Farina, 2015. "Development theory and poverty. A review," Working Papers 46-2015, Macerata University, Department of Studies on Economic Development (DiSSE), revised Jan 2015.
    8. World Bank, 2011. "Philippines," World Bank Publications - Reports 27384, The World Bank Group.
    9. Ravallion, Martin, 2012. "Benchmarking global poverty reduction," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6205, The World Bank.
    10. Maxim Pinkovskiy & Xavier Sala-i-Martin & Kasey Chatterji-Len & William Nober, 2024. "Inequality Within Countries is Falling: Underreporting-Robust Estimates of World Poverty, Inequality and the Global Distribution of Income," LIS Working papers 880, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    11. Nora Lustig, 2016. "Commitment to Equity Handbook. A Guide to Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 1301, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    12. Inchauste, Gabriela & Azevedo, João Pedro & Olivieri, Sergio & Saavedra, Jaime & Winkler, Hernan, 2012. "When Job Earnings Are behind Poverty Reduction," World Bank - Economic Premise, The World Bank, issue 97, pages 1-6, November.
    13. Faqin Lin & Ermias O. Weldemicael & Xiaosong Wang, 2017. "Export sophistication increases income in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from 1981–2000," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 1627-1649, June.
    14. Christoph Lakner & Daniel Gerszon Mahler & Mario Negre & Espen Beer Prydz, 2022. "How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 559-585, September.
    15. Mthuli Ncube & Zuzana Brixiova & Zorobabel Bicaba, 2014. "Can Dreams Come True? Eliminating Extreme Poverty In Africa By 2030," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series wp1076, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    16. Leonardo Gasparini & Pablo Glüzmann, 2012. "Estimating Income Poverty and Inequality from the GallupWorld Poll: The case of Latin America and the Caribbean," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 21(1), pages 3-27, March.
    17. Sinha Roy, Sutirtha & van der Weide, Roy, 2025. "Estimating poverty for India after 2011 using private-sector survey data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    18. Espen Beer Prydz & Dean Jolliffe & Umar Serajuddin, 2022. "Disparities in Assessments of Living Standards Using National Accounts and Household Surveys," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(S2), pages 385-420, December.
    19. Maxim Pinkovskiy & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2015. "Lights, Camera,... Income! Estimating Poverty Using National Accounts, Survey Means and Lights," LIS Working papers 645, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    20. Jordá, Vanesa & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2019. "Global inequality: How large is the effect of top incomes?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    21. Dollar, David & Kleineberg, Tatjana & Kraay, Aart, 2016. "Growth still is good for the poor," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 68-85.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O20 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - General
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • J88 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:gigawp:266. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dueiide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.