Growing up global and equal? Inequality trends among world children, 1980–2005

Children are increasingly expected to grow up global yet their worldwide inequality is understudied; while countries’ incomes may be converging, it is unclear whether children's outcomes also do. This paper investigates the recent trends in global inequality among children. Findings show a fall in resource inequality, driven by Asia's exponential economic growth and Africa's slowing fertility trends. Paradoxically, this resource convergence occurred alongside divergence in infant mortality. Such findings have three implications. First, they caution against assuming automatic convergence in children's well-being in response to income convergence between nations. Second, they illustrate how national differences in age dependency account for global inequality among children. Third and more broadly, they stress the importance of demographic and policy – in addition to economic – convergence in bridging substantive inequality among the world‘s children.     

Climate,floods, and migration in Pakistan

This commentary offers a glimpse into the complex landscape of climate-induced migration in rural Pakistan. By shedding light on the interplay between gradual ecological shifts and rapid climate shocks, it exposes the misalignment between climate policies and the mobility strategies of marginalized communities. The vulnerabilities of rural Pakistanis facing climate and ecological shocks, like the 2022 floods, are rooted in the historical mismanagement of land and water commons. The current focus on infrastructure-heavy interventions does not address the rigidity introduced by colonial and postcolonial interventions, which have undermined the seasonal mobility and fluidity of pastoralists, peasants, fishers and the landless in rural Pakistan. Thinking climate and migration together requires us to consider the socio-economic constraints and drivers of migration, burgeoning political conflicts, and the ecological consequences of infrastructure-heavy climate adaptation strategies by global investors and the Pakistani state.