Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations and Data Notes -- Overview -- Inequity within and across nations -- Why does equity matter for development? -- Leveling the economic and political playing fields -- 1 Introduction -- Equity and inequality of opportunity: the basic concepts -- Inequality traps -- A brief preview of the Report -- Part I Inequity within and across countries -- focus 1 on Palanpur -- 2 Inequity within countries: individuals and groups -- Inequalities in health -- Inequalities in education -- Economic inequalities -- The relationship between group differences and inequality -- Agency and equity: inequalities of power -- The inequality trap for women -- 3 Equity from a global perspective -- Examples and concepts -- Global inequalities in health -- Global inequalities in education -- Global inequalities in income and expenditure -- Global inequalities in power -- A glimpse of the future -- focus 2 on empowerment -- Part II Why does equity matter? -- 4 Equity and well-being -- Ethical and philosophical approaches to equity -- Equity and legal institutions -- People prefer fairness -- Income inequality and poverty reduction -- 5 Inequality and investment -- Markets, wealth, status, and investment behavior -- The evidence on underinvestment -- Inequalities and investment -- focus 3 on Spain -- 6 Equity, institutions, and the development process -- The distribution of power and institutional quality: circles vicious and virtuous -- Institutions and political inequality matter for development: historical evidence -- Institutions and political inequality matter for development: contemporary evidence -- Transitions to more equitable institutions -- Conclusion -- focus 4 on Indonesia -- Part III Leveling the economic and political playing fields -- 7 Human capacities -- Early childhood development: a better start in life.

Basic education: expanding opportunities to learn -- Toward better health for all -- Social protection: managing risk and providing social assistance -- Summary -- 8 Justice, land, and infrastructure -- Building equitable justice systems -- Toward greater equity in access to land -- Providing infrastructure equitably -- Summary -- focus 5 on taxation -- 9 Markets and the macroeconomy -- How markets relate to equity -- Achieving equity and efficiency in financial markets -- Achieving equity and efficiency in labor markets -- Product markets and trade reform -- Macroeconomic management and equity -- focus 6 on regional inequality -- 10 Achieving greater global equity -- Making global markets work more equitably -- Providing development assistance to help build endowments -- Transitions to greater equity -- Summary -- focus 7 on drug access -- Epilogue -- Bibliographic note -- Endnotes -- References -- Selected Indicators -- Measuring Equity -- Selected world development indicators -- Index -- Boxes -- 2.1 Unequal opportunities persist across generations in Brazil -- 2.2 Unequal assets, unequal opportunities: AIDS orphans in Southern Africa -- 2.3 Health improvements and greater health equity in Peru -- 2.4 Child test scores in Ecuador: the role of wealth, parental education, and place of residence -- 2.5 Beware of intercountry comparisons of inequality! -- 2.6 Revisiting the Kuznets hypothesis for economic growth and inequality -- 2.7 Inequitable agencies and institutions in Pakistan -- 2.8 Legacies of discrimination and the reproduction of inequalities and poverty among the Batwa in Uganda -- 2.9 Sex ratios and "missing women" -- 3.1 Three competing concepts of inequality: global, international, and intercountry -- 4.1 A simple representation of different concepts of equity -- 4.2 Capuchin monkeys don't like inequity either . . .

4.3 Worker perceptions of unfairness, product quality, and consumer safety -- 6.1 Banking in the nineteenth century, Mexico and the United States -- 6.2 Growth with poor institutions does not last -- 6.3 Polarization, conflict, and growth -- 6.4 Aiding equitable growth in early modern Britain: the role of the Poor Laws -- 7.1 ECD programs are an essential ingredient for the attainment of education for all -- 7.2 School fees-an instrument of exclusion or accountability? -- 7.3 Desegregating Roma schools in Bulgaria: the Vidin model -- 7.4 Remedying education: the Balsakhi program in India -- 7.5 School vouchers: efficient and equitable? -- 7.6 Working with mothers to treat malaria -- 7.7 Poor people and ethnic minorities receive lower-quality care -- 7.8 Better maternal health in Malaysia and Sri Lanka -- 7.9 Mobilizing support for universal coverage in Thailand -- 7.10 Public works programs: key issues -- 7.11 Africa's orphans and public action -- 8.1 Increasing legal literacy and public awareness: "My Rights" on Armenian public television -- 8.2 Affirmative action in India and the United States -- 8.3 State frameworks and customary institutions in South Africa -- 8.4 The impact of legal aid in Ecuador -- 8.5 Bogota, Colombia: civic culture program -- 8.6 Land reform in South Africa: picking up steam -- 8.7 Clarifying how customary rights fit with formal systems -- 8.8 Land and output tax combinations -- 8.9 Lagging infrastructure in Africa -- 8.10 The distributional impact of infrastructure privatization in Latin America: a mixed bag -- 8.11 The pro-poor agenda for urban water in Senegal -- 8.12 Addressing accountability and transparency in telecommunications in Brazil and Peru -- 9.1 Markets and development: policy, equity, and social welfare in China -- 9.2 Too much and too little regulation: Russia before and after the transition.

9.3 Organizing in the informal economy -- 9.4 Employment protection legislation -- 9.5 Two cases of labor market reform: One comprehensive, one partial -- 9.6 Did the Russian 1998 crisis have equitable consequences? -- 10.1 International law, globalization, and equity -- 10.2 Making migrant worker schemes more development friendly -- 10.3 Cotton subsidies are huge-and tenacious -- 10.4 Will improved working conditions in Cambodia's textile industry survive the end of the quota system? -- 10.5 Expanding access to antiretroviral drugs in South Africa -- Figures -- 1 Wealth matters for the immunization of children -- 2 Opportunities are determined early -- 3 Life expectancy improved and became more equal-until the onset of the AIDS crisis -- 4 A long-run diverging trend in income inequality begins to reverse because of growth in China and India -- 5 Children's performance differs when their caste is made salient -- 6 Catching up through early interventions -- 7 Better to be close to economic opportunities -- 1.1 The interaction of political, economic, and sociocultural inequalities -- 2.1 Infant mortality varies across countries but also by mother's education within countries -- 2.2 Stunting levels of children born in rural versus urban areas are far from the same -- 2.3 Access to childhood immunization services depends on parents' economic status -- 2.4 Stunting and underweight in Cambodia -- 2.5 Education levels vary across countries, but they also depend on gender of household head -- 2.6 Education levels vary by country and between rural and urban sectors -- 2.7 The share of inequality in years of schooling attributable to differences between males and females has been declining -- 2.8 Market capitalization controlled by the top 10 families in selected countries, 1996 -- 2.9 Africa and Latin America have the world's highest levels of inequality.

2.10 Between-group inequality decompositions: social group of the household head -- 2.11 Between-group inequality decompositions: education of the household head -- 2.12 Location, education, and social groups can make a difference: regressions of total inequality on shares of between-group inequality of different household characteristics 43 -- 2.13 Women work longer hours than do men -- 3.1 Vanishing twin peaks in life expectancy at birth -- 3.2 Life expectancy is highly correlated with income, particularly in poor countries -- 3.3 The distribution of years of schooling improved greatly in the second half of the twentieth century -- 3.4 Mean years of schooling increased while inequality declined across birth cohorts -- 3.5 Gender disparities in years of schooling declined but remained significant in some regions -- 3.6 Incomes range broadly across countries and individuals -- 3.7 Since 1950, intercountry inequality increased while international inequality declined -- 3.8 Unlike relative inequality, absolute inequality has been steadily increasing -- 3.9 The inequality decline between countries was neutralized by increases within countries -- 3.10 Inequality between countries became much more important over the long run -- 3.11 Absolute poverty declined globally, but not in every region -- 3.12 There is no one-to-one relationship between voice and income -- 4.1 The distribution of observed offers in ultimatum games -- 4.2 Views on inequality from the World Values Survey -- 4.3 Growth is the key to poverty reduction . . . -- 4.4 . . . and, on average, growth is distribution-neutral -- 4.5 The national growth incidence curves for Tunisia 1980-1995 and Senegal 1994-2001 -- 4.6 Greater inequality reduces the power of growth to reduce poverty -- 5.1 In rural Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the rich access most of the credit and pay relatively low rates.

5.2 Children's performance differs when their caste is made public.