Monday, February 21st, 2022
11:00 – 12:15 p.m. ET
via Zoom
We were pleased to invite you to a joint virtual event with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report Office (HDRO) on Monday, February 21st, 2022. This event featured Kehinde Omotoso presenting “Profiling Gendered Multidimensional Poverty and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa” and Jacob Assa as a discussant.
About the Speaker:
Kehinde O. Omotoso holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her research covers a wide range of development issues relating to multidimensional poverty, health, gender, climate change and food security. Her research and policy experience spans over a decade during which she has gained a deep understanding of the microeconomic factors that determine poverty and health inequality in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. She contributes regularly to the policy discourse on multidimensional poverty in the context of sustainable development goals (SDGs). She has presented several research papers in both national and international conferences, seminars and workshops. She has a number of research articles published in reputable journals. She is currently on a post-doctoral research fellowship
About the Discussant:
Jacob Assa is a Strategic Advisor with UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa. He began his U.N. career 22 years ago as a statistician and then chief of section (DESA/UNSD), focusing on macroeconomic aggregates and development indicators. In this role he was the chief editor of three flagship statistical publications. More recently Jacob worked as an economist focusing on both the least developed countries (at UN-OHRLLS) and UNDP’s Human Development Report (HDR). At UN-OHRLLS, he co-authored the annual SG’s report as well as the flagship publication – State of the LDCs. At UNDP, Jacob co-authored the two most recent HDRs – Inequality in Human Development (2019) and The next frontier: Human development and the Anthropocene (2020). He also developed UNDP’s proposal for a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, which the Administrator has referred to as an example of thought leadership. Jacob holds a Ph.D. in Economics (2015) from the New School for Social Research and his doctoral dissertation – The Financialization of GDP: Implications for economic theory and policy – has been published as a book by Routledge. He has published in peer-reviewed journals on inequality and growth, financialization, peacebuilding and development, and the political economy of national accounting, most recently in the journals Ecological Economics and New Political Economy.
About the Series:
The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report office (UNDP HDRO), are pleased to host a special seminar series on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI).
Bringing together the academic and policy spheres, this series of seminars will highlight topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and caste, the statistical capacity of nations, social protection, the use of geospatial mapping in tracking poverty, poverty and refugees, and evaluating whether we’re on track to meet UN SDG Goal #1. The sessions will also include work that applies the global MPI methodology, the Alkire Foster method, to innovative measures.
