This article posits the contradictory relation between capitalist and non-capitalist segments of an economy as a key dimension of the colonial encounter and as a critical and constitutive element in the contemporary process of postcolonial capitalist development. It points to the obfuscation of this contradiction in the prevalent theoretical approaches in development economics, particularly focusing on the discourse on informal economy and the role of identity. It then foregrounds an emerging theoretical framework on postcolonial economic dynamics — and its key methodological tenets — that frames the development process as being marked by this on-going and ever-occurring contradiction. The article, however, highlights a key gap in this framework to grapple with the role of identities in these development dynamics, and points to some critical methodological approaches to identity that may be productively integrated to further develop it. Finally, the article provides empirical illustrations from the Indian context that underscores the constitutive role of caste in shaping both the reproduction of non-capitalist informal enterprises that sustain the working populations excluded from the capitalist segments, as well as the selective inclusion of parts of this population into capitalist segments as informal wage labor — processes that can be generatively interpreted through the above theoretical framework. Through this intervention, the article aims to clear grounds towards formulating a pathway to build a decolonized approach to contemporary processes of economic development.
In sub-Saharan Africa, population growth coupled with weak or missing markets for clean energy means that the absolute number of people relying on woodfuels for cooking is growing. Charcoal, which has distinctly different environmental and economic implications from firewood, has become one of the most consumed fuels in the region. However, among rural populations, the drivers and consequences of charcoal use remain under-studied. We examine rural woodfuel dynamics in Malawi, a majority rural country with high poverty, rapid population growth, lagging economic development, and abundant but rapidly declining forest resources. We examine how household energy transitions are influenced by concurrent demographic, economic, and land use changes. Using four waves of national household surveys and satellite-derived forest cover datasets, we investigate trends in household energy consumption, identify factors driving rural household fuel choices, and characterize geographic patterns of forest cover loss during 2004–2020. During this time, the share of rural households using charcoal grew from 3.9% to 13.4%. Rural households that are smaller, headed by younger individuals, and are asset-rich but land-poor had greater odds of using charcoal compared to firewood, indicating that rural livelihood dynamics have important consequences for household energy transitions. Several protected areas have experienced > 20% forest cover loss since 2001, characterized by geographic patterns consistent with unsanctioned woodfuel extraction. These findings emphasize a renewed need for integrated natural resources, energy, and livelihoods management strategies. Our insights provide information for policy makers to better predict and understand the continued growth of charcoal’s popularity in Malawi and similar contexts.
Despite major gains in primary school enrollment across low- and middle-income countries, secondary school completion remains low. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in Burkina Faso to evaluate the effectiveness of three interventions designed to reduce early secondary school leaving: (i) information on the economic and health returns to education, (ii) tailored tutoring, and (iii) conditional cash incentives. The cash intervention significantly increased school enrollment, any school attendance, and regular attendance, and reduced the total number of school days missed. Tutoring significantly increased school enrollment, while its effects on regular attendance and academic progression were imprecisely estimated. The information intervention generated limited evidence of impacts, with no statistically significant effects on the primary outcome or academic progression and only marginal evidence of an increase in any school attendance. Financial and academic support can help adolescents who left school early re-enroll, but larger studies are needed to identify which interventions most effectively sustain regular attendance.
Access to safe and reliable drinking water remains uneven across sub-Saharan Africa, yet existing evidence largely focuses on health outcomes and binary measures of access, overlooking how different service levels affect everyday well-being. This study examines how the water service ladder shapes the emotional and physical burdens of water poverty and whether these effects differ by household head gender in Mozambique. Using nationally representative data from the 2022–2023 Mozambique Demographic and Health Survey and a multivalued treatment effects framework, we estimate the impacts of unimproved, limited, basic, and safely managed water services on water-related worry, anger, hygiene deprivation, and insufficient drinking water. Results show that limited services, i.e., improved sources located more than 30 min away, do not significantly reduce water-related distress relative to unimproved sources. In contrast, both basic and safely managed services substantially reduce emotional and physical burdens, with no additional gains from on-premises access beyond the 30-minute accessibility threshold. Female-headed households are more likely to access improved services, but the well-being benefits of improved water access do not differ by household head gender. These findings highlight the importance of service proximity rather than source type alone and suggest that progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 6 may be overstated when measured using binary indicators of improved access. The results emphasize the need for policy strategies that prioritize reducing collection time to deliver meaningful well-being gains from water infrastructure investments.
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This study examines the health and welfare costs of construction-driven air pollution in a rapidly urbanizing context. We exploit the predictable, nationwide cessation of construction during China’s Spring Festival holiday, combined with cross-city variation in construction intensity, as a quasi-natural experiment identifying the causal effect of construction on air quality and mortality. Using city-level panel data from the China National Environmental Monitoring Centre matched with official construction statistics, we show that a 10,000-square-meter increase in annual construction area widens the Air Quality Index (AQI) gap between active-construction and holiday-shutdown periods by 0.772 points, raising annual respiratory and cardiovascular mortality rates by 0.173 and 0.737 per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively. These health costs fall disproportionately on women. We propose and test a gendered time–space exposure mechanism: socially structured differences in caregiving responsibilities and labor force participation increase women’s daytime exposure to localized construction pollution. Consistent with this mechanism, the female mortality effect is larger in cities with heavier childcare burdens and lower female labor force participation. We estimate annual welfare losses of $84.32 billion, equivalent to a gross health externality of $9.01 per square meter of annual construction. We interpret these estimates as pricing an urban-development externality, pointing to targeted mitigation through dust control, work scheduling, and residential-area protection.
Sub-Saharan Africa experiences some of the world’s highest deforestation rates, partly because households turn to charcoal production when agricultural shocks reduce farm income. Yet the extent to which alternative coping strategies can offset this pressure on forests remains unclear. This study examines how access to other livelihoods shapes household responses to the first appearance of the Fall Armyworm (FAW) in Zambia. Using four years of household panel data and exploiting spatial variation in FAW intensity, we estimate the causal effects of FAW on charcoal production and local deforestation. We find that low, medium, and severe FAW exposure raise the likelihood of charcoal production by 4.8, 8.6, and 12.3 percentage points, respectively, and are associated with increases in surrounding deforestation of approximately 7.3%, 18.9%, and 26.2%, respectively. However, these effects are substantially smaller among households that diversify crops and use pesticides. In contrast, households engaged in off-farm work are more likely to participate in charcoal production. Our findings show that the environmental consequences of agricultural shocks depend critically on the availability of alternative coping strategies, highlighting the importance of policies that expand non-forest-based livelihood options.
Gender and climate change scholars have demonstrated how gendered livelihood (re)produces unequal vulnerabilities between men and women shaped by differentiated adaptive capacities. In response,human-nature interaction scholars underscore the reciprocal relationship between human beings and the environment by highlighting their mutual agency and the ability of environmental change to shape the formation and transformation of gendered livelihoods.Inspired by the human-nature interaction studies,we explore how communities’ responses, coping and adapting to climate change, shape the formation and transformation of gendered livelihood strategies. Drawing on the gendered lens, we explored the everyday lived experiences of rural communities under climate change; analysed gendered livelihood formation (resource access, control and power relations); examined gendered livelihood transformation under climate change; and offered reflections on the implications for resilient livelihood planning. The study found that gendered livelihood practices are transforming as communities’ respond to climate change. Women were found engaged in farming, out-migration, livestock and poultry rearing, complementary but contradictory to livelihood strategies perceived as feminine.The constellation of livelihood activities and strategies practised by women enhanced their resilience capacities to climate change but increased their domestic and economic burdens through simultaneous engagement in productive and reproductive roles. Men were perceived as more vulnerable in adapting their livelihoods to climate change. We argue that policy planning interventions toward rural livelihood enhancement should focus on improving the productive adaptive capacities of both men and women towards fostering resilient livelihoods.
The environment underpins human well-being, yet its degradation increasingly threatens recent development gains, particularly in human health. This paper examines how forest loss affects early childhood health through the hydrological services that forests provide—an important but understudied mechanism. By linking high-resolution forest cover loss data with health outcomes for 0.7 million children across 46 countries, we exploit spatial and temporal variation in upstream forest cover loss measured at different points in time to assess downstream health impacts on rural households. Our findings show that upstream forest loss significantly increases the incidence of diarrheal disease among children under five, underscoring the critical role forests play in maintaining water quality through natural filtration. The health effects are not only immediate but also persistent: upstream forest cover loss leads to higher stunting rates, a key indicator of long-term productivity and human health. Furthermore, we find that the type of land cover transitions matters. Forest degradation and conversion to grassland are particularly harmful, while conversion to urban land may mitigate health impacts—likely due to improved infrastructure and access to services. These findings highlight the essential role of upstream forest ecosystems in supporting human capital and emphasize the need to preserve and restore natural capital to improve long-term health and development outcomes.
Evidence for high-income countries suggests that higher levels of political trust, defined as confidence in state actors, are associated with greater openness to immigration. We argue that in contexts of weak state governance, trust in non-state actors, such as the church or international organizations, may also be relevant. To examine this, we conduct face-to-face surveys, each including a conjoint experiment, in three border locations experiencing large inflows of Venezuelans: Boa Vista (Brazil), Cúcuta (Colombia), and San Fernando (Trinidad and Tobago). The results indicate that higher levels of trust in international organizations, particularly UNHCR, are associated with lower preferences for community profiles with a closed door to immigration. These findings point to the importance of a more nuanced conceptualization of trust that includes non-state actors when examining public attitudes toward immigration in settings of weak state governance. They also highlight the value of moving beyond national-level or state-centric analyses toward approaches that are more sensitive to local governance contexts. Finally, the results are consistent with the view that, in such regions, international organizations are perceived as trusted intermediaries in relation to immigration attitudes.
While several different statistical methods have been employed to measure financial inclusion, two of the most frequently used in the literature are the adaptation of the Human Development Index (HDI) methodology proposed by Sarma (2008) and, more recently, the two-stage Principal Component Analysis (PCA) suggested by Cámara and Tuesta (2014). Employing a unique dataset on the access and usage of financial services across Mexican municipalities, this paper proposes the alternative use of two unsupervised Machine Learning (ML) methods: Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) and Kernel PCA (KPCA). To contrast the performance of the four different methods, we first cluster the municipalities using the K-Means algorithm. Thereafter, we focus our comparison of the indices produced by the four methods on the most financially excluded clusters, using standard ML performance metrics: precision, recall, F1 score, and accuracy. Our results show that both HDI and NMF significantly outperform PCA-based methods across different thresholds at the bottom of the distribution. Several robustness checks confirm our findings. This result is particularly significant, as poverty alleviation, one of the primary targets of financial inclusion, can only be achieved successfully if policymakers accurately identify individuals and regions that are excluded or underserved by the financial sector.
The concept of development has deeply divided the social sciences concerned with peoples and earth’s future. For many researchers and practitioners, variants of development are crucial normative cornerstones to frame and guide research and policy. Many critical scholars and activists associate the term with colonial, capitalist, extractivist, and patriarchal threats, and see it as the root cause of environmental degradation. In short, some study development as a solution, others as the problem. I call this rift the Development Studies Divide. After tracing diverse disciplinary roots, I discuss where the fault lines run and whether fruitful frictions could enrich the future of (critical) development studies. Despite stark differences in ideological, epistemological, and conceptual orientations, there is room for mutual learning, specifically across methodologies. A reflexive integration of critical perspectives with quantitative methods can substantiate critical claims beyond isolated case studies, address them at larger scales, and generate robust knowledge on alternatives to development beyond largely theory-driven proposals. It could also correct global empirical analyses that become problematic when their assumptions and interpretations are not grounded in the diverse histories, worldviews, and values of non-Western realities.
In conflict-affected contexts, the presence of armed actors—including state security forces, international peacekeeping missions, and non-state armed groups—means that aid organisations may need to cooperate with these actors to deliver foreign aid. Yet the conditions under which this cooperation happens remain underspecified. In this article, we use novel mixed methods data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to study these conditions. Building on qualitative interviews with Kinshasa-based aid practitioners, as well as a survey and survey experiment with Congolese provincial-level aid workers, we provide systematic evidence of the conditions under which humanitarian and development aid workers are more or less likely to collaborate with different types of armed actors across different regions of the country. We test three hypotheses: the type of armed actor, the visibility of cooperation, and the proximity to conflict. Our findings suggest that the type of armed actor and the proximity of the aid workers to conflict matter most. The public visibility of their collaboration is less important than anticipated. For those at the forefront of aid delivery, it is primarily the concrete realities and day-to-day interactions that appear to shape decision-making and behavior.
Millions of people are resettled each year when dam construction floods their homes and land. Dam building and its associated resettlement may impact water security by altering access to drinking water and sanitation, disrupting aquatic ecosystems, shifting local economies, and undermining the ability to use rivers for income, navigation, and cultural practices. This paper explores how dam-induced-displacement and resettlement in the Brazilian Amazon shaped women’s experiences of water (in)security along four dimensions: Access, Safety, Livelihoods, and Culture. We conducted in-depth interviews with 70 women in the city of Altamira who were impacted by the Belo Monte Dam and who had participated in household surveys before dam construction began. Our findings suggest that dam building and resettlement did not universally improve or degrade water security, but rather shifted it in uneven ways. While access to water improved for some women, the majority of respondents experienced water outages after the dam, some for weeks at a time. Safety from seasonal flooding and access to sanitation improved for many, though poor water quality and lack of maintenance of sanitation infrastructure created problems. Finally, resettlement and changes in river ecology undermined livelihoods for fisheries-dependent households and severed cultural connections to the river for many. These findings have crucial implications for health outcomes and can inform policies to improve the water security and well-being of populations resettled due to future dams, other development projects, and climate change.
Global conservation policies increasingly recognize the vital role of local and Indigenous communities in ecosystem protection, but mechanisms to support such communities’ livelihoods in a conservation context remain limited. Based on participatory engagement with diverse highland communities in the northern Thai tropics, we co-designed a highland origin label with the intention to alleviate Indigenous livelihood pressures. This study assessed whether this label can positively influence downstream urban consumers’ willingness-to-pay for Indigenous highland communities’ produce, using cross-sectional, qualitative, and choice experimental data. The study was implemented between February and April 2025 across four urban markets in Chiang Mai City, Thailand, including actual buying decisions for strawberries and chayote fruits and experimental exposure to background information on Indigenous highland livelihoods. The results from 888 real-market consumers revealed a substantial willingness-to-pay premium for origin-labelled products, with +11.6 Thai Baht/+56.3% on average (chayote: +10.4 Thai Baht/+50.0%; strawberries: +12.6 Thai Baht, +61.1%). Higher willingness-to-pay was positively associated with prior experience of purchasing labelled products and interest in Indigenous rights, negatively with price-conscious shoppers, and not associated with exposure to livelihood information. Large classes of shoppers (at least 75.9%) exhibited high utility for the origin label. Qualitative responses indicated strong positive sentiment and label credibility, although with a risk of overinterpretation. We conclude that co-developed origin labels can elicit substantial consumer willingness-to-pay, but translating it into tangible support for Indigenous livelihoods would require further considerations of agricultural value chain optimisation, cooperative support, channels for direct and consumer-segment-specific marketing, and tackling problematic Indigenous stereotypes.
Why do so many eligible individuals fail to sign up for government social assistance benefits? While non-take-up of social benefits is of great concern both for the effectiveness and equity of social policies, academics and policymakers continue to be puzzled by the lack of clarity on why people forgo increases in disposable income. Focusing on literature from the Global South, this review puts forward an analytical framework that identifies how structural conditions shape the context in which individual and institutional factors operate. Together, these interact to mitigate or exacerbate compliance, learning, and psychological costs as well as perceived relative benefits. Findings are synthesised around the three cost types. Overall, this review concludes that individual characteristics alone rarely explain non-take-up as their effects are moderated by the structural, programmatic and institutional conditions in which they operate. This helps explain why the literature often produces inconclusive or even contradictory findings regarding the determinants of take-up. These findings prompt further investigation into the structural conditions and programmatic and institutional factors that shape take-up gaps, and that policies aiming to close these gaps should consider.
