ON A hillside about an hour’s drive north of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, is a visible demonstration of the difference between the miserable reality of smallholder farming in Africa and what it could be. On one side of the steep terraces stand verdant bushes, their stems heavy with plump coffee beans. A few feet away are sickly ones, their sparse leaves spotted with disease and streaked with yellow because of a lack of fertiliser.
Author: WHES
Women’s prospects limited by law in 155 countries, World Bank study finds. Two decades after Beijing declaration on gender equality, women’s economic opportunities and working rights still widely subject to restrictive legislation.
About 155 countries have at least one law that limits women’s economic opportunities, while 100 states put restrictions on the types of jobs women can do and 18 allow husbands to dictate whether their wives can work at all, according to a World Bank report that paints a stark picture of the enduring obstacles women face in achieving economic empowerment.Access full report.
Nearly $100 billion flowed iIllegally through Myanmar from 1960 to 2013
Illicit Outflows average 6.5% of Myanmar’s Official GDP; Technical Smuggling of Imports via Fraudulent Misinvoicing Accounts for 71.0% of Myanmar’s Illicit Inflows.Underground Economy Averaged 55.1% of Country’s GDP; Drives and is Driven by Illicit Flows
14 percent of U.S.families food insecure in 2014; 5.6 percent very food insecure, USDA report says
In 2014, 14.0 percent of U.S. households were food insecure. The change from 2013 (14.3 percent) was not statistically significant; however, the cumulative decline from 2011 (14.9 percent) to 2014 was statistically significant.
India targets tax evaders who hide ‘black money’ at home and abroad. A new law imposing stiff tax penalties and up to 10 years in prison has created panic among India’s elite.
NEW DELHI — Among the pledges that propelled Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power a year ago was one to bring home millions of dollars of illicit money the super-rich had stashed abroad.
How a peaceful political uprising happened in war-scarred Guatemala
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UN agency forced to cut food aid to 229,000 Syrian refugees
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — The cash-strapped World Food Program has had to drop one-third of Syrian refugees from its food voucher program in Middle Eastern host countries this year, including 229,000 in Jordan who stopped receiving food aid in September, a spokeswoman said Friday.
Guatemalan president quits amid corruption scandal
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Understanding the historic divergence between productivity and workers pay
Wage stagnation experienced by the vast majority of American workers has emerged as a central issue in economic policy debates, with candidates and leaders of both parties noting its importance. This is a welcome development because it means that economic inequality has become a focus of attention and that policymakers are seeing the connection between wage stagnation and inequality. Put simply, wage stagnation is how the rise in inequality has damaged the vast majority of American workers
Occupational wage declines since the Great Recession: Low-wage occupations see largest real wage declines
On this Labor Day 2015, the U.S. labor market has shown considerable healing since the Great Recession. Private sector employment has expanded steadily, and the jobless rate has continued to fall. Yet, underlying weaknesses persist, as evidenced by the historically low employment rate of prime-age workers and the stubbornly high number of individuals unemployed for longer than six months. The “real” unemployment rate—which includes those working part time who want full-time work, and those who have stopped searching but if offered a job would take it—remains in excess of 10 percent.
