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UN DESA Policy Brief No. 168: Net Wealth Taxes: How they can help fight inequality and fund sustainable development
Ensuring effective taxation of wealth is a tool to address inequality, increase progressivity in the tax system, and raise domestic revenues to finance sustainable development. This policy brief outlines the advantages and disadvantages of net wealth taxes, lays out some policy instruments that help in their administration, and explains why and how international tax cooperation can aid countries in successfully levying net wealth taxes.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 167: Leveraging population trends for a more sustainable and inclusive future: Insights from World Population Prospects 2024
Understanding how population trends are likely to unfold in the short, medium and long terms is critical for achieving a more inclusive, prosperous and sustainable future. This policy brief provides an overview of some of the main findings of the World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results with the aim of helping countries prepare for population sizes, age structures and spatial distributions that may differ appreciably from those of their recent past.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 163: Policy Choices for Leaving No One Behind (LNOB): Overview From 2023 SDG Summit Commitments
Prioritizing leaving no one behind (LNoB), 31 countries have introduced new policies and commitments aimed at eradicating poverty, enhancing human capital, addressing uneven access to basic necessities, improving decision-making processes on sustainable development and ensuring no country or locality is left behind.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 161: On the path to an older population: Maximizing the benefits from the demographic dividend in the least developed countries
While many least developed countries (LDCs) are still experiencing persistently high fertility and rapid population growth, they have also begun to experience progressive population ageing. Preparing for population ageing in LDCs will be critical for achieving sustainable development and ensuring that no one is left behind. Maximizing the benefits from the demographic dividend will provide an opportunity for these countries to develop economically before their populations become much older.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 157: How Can Governments Strengthen Their Relationships with Society to Meet the Sustainable Development Goals? Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked innovation and experimentation in public institutions. Institutional and policy changes can improve Governments’ relationships with other actors and highlight opportunities to accelerate SDG progress. Renewed social contracts, built on trust, are crucial if societies are to meet today’s compounding challenges, better respond to future crises, and achieve the SDGs.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 155: Accelerating middle-income countries’ progress towards sustainable development
Many MICs require international support to address current and long-term challenges. Eligibility criteria that rely only on income per capita limit available support – including access to concessional finance – without accounting for MICs’ multidimensional development needs.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 146: Why safe, orderly and regular migration matters for sustainable development
Respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human rights of all migrants, regardless of their migration status, benefit migrants and countries alike. Addressing the adverse drivers and structural factors that hinder people from building and maintaining sustainable livelihoods in their own countries and communities can reduce the pressure to migrate.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 136: Promoting non-discrimination in public administration: some entry points
The promotion of non-discrimination needs to be formally mainstreamed throughout public administration. This brief examines a limited selection: citizens’ charters, public procurement, positive duties, institutional culture, artificial intelligence, workforce diversity, schools of public administration, and public audits.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #119: The critical role of income redistribution for poverty reduction: Alternative scenarios
Achieving SDG 1 by 2030, will require extraordinary efforts by countries, both individually and collectively.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #113: Digitally enabled new forms of work and policy implications for labour regulation frameworks and social protection systems
Social protection systems need to adapt to ensure no worker is left unprotected in a future world of work transformed by digital technology.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #104: In situ urbanization key to leaving no one behind
Expanding opportunities in non-farm activities in rural areas is a key for sustainable development without “leaving no one behind”. Where the typical farmers are small landowners, technology alone may not be able to help farmers escape from poverty, and technical advances need to be complemented by a holistic approach.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #92: Leveraging digital technologies for social inclusion
COVID-19 is accelerating the pace of digital transformation. In so doing, it is opening the opportunities for advancing social progress and fostering social inclusion, while simultaneously exacerbating the risk of increased inequalities and exclusion of those who are not digitally connected.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #86: The long-term impact of COVID-19 on poverty
As developing countries currently face the prospect
of costly debt crises with far-reaching consequences,
global action is urgently needed. The window to mitigate
the disastrous long-term consequences of COVID-19 on
poverty is closing rapidly.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #65: Responses to the COVID-19 catastrophe could turn the tide on inequality
This brief identifies inequalities around the COVID-19
pandemic in exposure, vulnerabilities and coping capacity.
It suggests that crisis responses in four areas could turn
the tide on inequality. These include expanding systems
for the universal provision of quality social services;
identifying and empowering vulnerable groups; investing
in jobs and livelihoods; and acting through the multilateral
system to respond to disparities across countries.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #60: Commodity exporters face mounting economic challenges as pandemic spreads
Unlike most developed economies, commodity exporters—saddled with large budget deficits and high levels of government debt—will find it extremely difficult to roll out large fiscal stimulus.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #55: The Global context for the 2030 Agenda
Globalization and technological progress have enabled unprecedented gains in wellbeing across the world. However, imbalances in global flows, when they emerge, continue to plague the global economic and financial system, and cause development setbacks. The turbulence of the last decade demonstrated once again that global mechanisms remain ill-suited to protect the most vulnerable countries and populations groups from the effects of crises.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #54: Global development trends at the turn of the century
From the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, there are three major issues that shaped the world economy: the convergence of developing countries’ income with respect to the average income of developed economies; the growing unbalances in the global economy which led eventually to the global financial crisis; and the adoption and implementation of the Millennium Development Goals.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #51: Reflecting on the World Economic and Social Survey's 70 years of development policy analysis
In drawing the most relevant lessons for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the World Economic and Social Survey 2017 systematically reviews the seven decades of development discussions contained in the publication – the oldest continuous publication of its kind.