Sussex enjoys a worldwide reputation for its work on the analysis of poverty, inequality and economic development. Research in this field has been an integral part of the Economics Department since the establishment of Sussex University. Michael Lipton, a pioneer of development studies at Sussex, set up the Poverty Research Unit (PRUS) in 1995 (soon to be relaunched as the Centre for Poverty and Inequality Research).
The main areas of our research are:
- trade and development;
- agriculture and rural development;
- the measurement of poverty and inequality;
- the role of redistribution in poverty reduction;
- climate, climate change, climate policy and economic development;
- demography, land distribution and development in Sub Saharan Africa;
- nutrition, health, poverty, institutions and economic development under colonial rule in Africa, and;
- causes of the rise of living standards of the poor in 20th century Europe with a focus on UK in the areas of water, sanitation, infant mortality and fertility and nutrition distributions.
There is also a variety of ongoing research on the impacts of migration on economic development at the Department - assessing the social and economic impacts of migration on the migrants and their sending communities especially the effects of remittances; labour mobility across border and its impacts on labour market in the receiving countries; labour markets segregation on racial and religious lines and; relations between trade, FDI and migration.