This paper introduces a significant new multi-disciplinary collection of studies of poverty dynamics, presenting the reader with the latest thinking by a group of researchers who are leaders in their respective disciplines. It argues that there are three main fronts on which progress must be...

Over the past decade, I have been involved with an “Exposure and Dialogue Program” (EDP), which literally exposes analysts and policy makers to the lived reality of poor women’s lives by getting them to spend a few days experiencing that life. After each EDP, participants are encouraged to...

In the empirical literature on minimum wage enforcement, the standard approach is to measure the number of violations, not their depth. In this paper we present a family of violation indices which, by analogy with poverty indices, can emphasize the depth of violation to different degrees. The...

Minimum wage legislation is central in South African policy discourse, with both strong support and strong opposition. The validity of either position depends, however, on the effectiveness of minimum wage enforcement. Using detailed matching of occupational, sectoral and locational codes in the...

This paper investigates the determinants of non-compliance or violation of minimum wage legislation in South Africa, a country where violation is high, at just under 50 percent. The number of labour inspectors per capita is used as a proxy for enforcement, whilst non-compliance is measured using...