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Jayati Ghosh says aid from Britain benefits the UK more than it does India, and makes a negligible difference to relieving poverty. She discusses India's rapid growth and its social and economic inequality, and calls for an economic strategy that focuses on secure employment

Brazil, which has more people of African descent than any other country outside of Africa itself, is assertively raising its profile again on the continent, building on historical ties from the time of the Portuguese empire.

The charm offensive is paying off in surging trade flows between Brazil and Africa, growing to $27.6 billion in 2011 from $4.3 billion in 2002.

Some of Brazil’s biggest inroads, predictably, are in Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola, where the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht ranks among the largest employers, and Mozambique, where the mining giant Vale has begun a $6 billion coal expansion project.

Under the “Partnership Agreement for Promoting Technical Cooperation with a Focus on South-South Initiatives”, the People’s Republic of China is committing US$1 million over three years to support South-South cooperation and the Decent Work agenda. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People’s Republic of China will assist developing countries in Asia promote full employment and decent work, through innovative technical cooperation projects that will facilitate the dissemination of good practices.

The agreement makes China the second of the so-called BRICS countries (Brazil, China, India, the Russian Federation, and South Africa) to sign a South-South agreement with the ILO.

Over the past three decades, as developing economies industrialized and began to compete in world markets, a global labor market started taking shape. As more than one billion people entered the labor force, a massive movement from “farm to factory” sharply accelerated growth of productivity and per capita GDP in China and other traditionally rural nations, helping to bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. To raise productivity, developed economies invested in labor-saving technologies and tapped global sources of low-cost labor.

Today, the strains on this market are becoming increasingly apparent. In advanced economies, demand for high-skill labor is now growing faster than supply, while demand for low-skill labor remains weak. Labor’s overall share of income, or the share of national income that goes to worker compensation, has fallen, and income inequality is growing as lower-skill workers—including 75 million young people—experience unemployment, underemployment, and stagnating wages.

The Recommendation requests countries to implement their Social Protection Floors as early as possible in national development processes .

Countries are encouraged to establish social protection floors (**) as a “fundamental element of their national social security systems” and as part of their social, economic and environmental development plans. Those countries who cannot afford the basic social protection measures could seek international cooperation and support to complement their own efforts.

The new ILO Recommendation is the first autonomous one to be voted on social security in 68 years. It comes 24 years after the last legal instrument on social protection was discussed by delegates from governments, workers and employers back in 1988.

In this contribution to the on-going debate about the relationship between income inequality and growth, UNCTAD argues that rising inequality is neither a necessary condition for sound economic growth, nor its natural result. By contrast, full participation of all citizens in the proceeds of the economy as a whole in indispensable for successful and sustained development.

The Report further discusses what are widely perceived to be the main structural causes of recent changes in income distribution, including trade, technological change, and finance-led globalization. It argues that the impacts of globalization and technological change on domestic income distribution are not uniform. Rather, they depend on initial conditions and on how macroeconomic, financial and labour market policies interact with the forces of globalization and technological development. Structural changes do not necessarily lead to greater inequality if appropriate employment, wage, and income distribution policies are in place

Finally, the Report examines how labour-market institutions and policies, together with an appropriate macroeconomic framework, can respond to current challenges and lead to sustained growth and more inclusive development. It starts with the proposition that slow growth has a strong impact on inequality, due to high unemployment, which weakens the bargaining power of labour.