IARIW-WB-CIEM Conference on Improving Well-being Measurement in Developing Countries for Better Evidence-based Policies

Topics on which proposals are welcome include the following sub-themes (which can overlap):

Data access and innovative data use

• Role of data access, dissemination and transparency in improving development outcomes;
• Innovative data use in monitoring and responding to natural disasters, pandemics, and climate change;
• Solutions to data challenges with monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);

Missing data and data imputation

• Addressing survey measurement errors and survey non-response for better data quality;
• Tackling missing data issues at the top or the bottom of the income distribution;
• Development of new small area estimation techniques or useful application of these techniques to inform policy;
• New data imputation methodologies;

Data generation and new data sources

• Review of existing databases, their strengths and weakness, on producing trends across countries and within the same countries over time;
• Generation of new datasets for better measurement of welfare;
• Innovative use of new alternative data sources to address gaps in traditional sources, such as big data or non-traditional data (e.g., nightlight, cell phone data) or data “beyond GDP”;
• Judicious use of other data sources to replace or combine with administrative data;

Well-being estimation in data-challenged contexts

• Estimation of poverty and inequality (including trends, dynamics, and inequality of opportunity) outcomes in data-challenged environments;
• Estimation of welfare outcomes for population groups that are traditionally not well captured in household surveys such as refugees or forcefully displaced populations;
• Welfare analysis in conflict environments;

Country statistical capacity

• Role of country statistical capacity/ performance in contributing to economic growth, poverty reduction and/ or better welfare outcomes;
• Potential for better collaboration between the public sector and the private sectors in creating more and high-quality data;
• Improvements of standards to enhance inter-operability between data systems toward a more integrated system with better data use and production;
• Political economy of data production and dissemination

Better use of data to address challenges in the Asian region

• How solutions to these data challenges could help alleviate issues in Asian countries. These include but are not limited to climate change, environmental pollution, population aging, forcibly displaced persons, and traffic congestion. Other challenges include improving economic resilience and economic structural transformation.

Timelines for the Conference

August 1, 2024                       Announcement of Call for Papers

January 31, 2025                     Deadline for Receipt of Paper Proposals

March 15, 2025                       Decisions on Proposals and Release of Preliminary Conference Program

March 31, 2025                       Deadline for Applications for Financial Assistance

April 15, 2025                         Decisions on Financial Assistance

August 31, 2025                     Deadline for Submission of papers (one month before conference) 

October 2-3, 2025                   Conference

December 31, 2025                 Deadline for Submission for RIW Special Issue

First half of 2027                    Release of special issue

RIW Special Issue

Selected papers from IARIW special conferences are normally published in special issues of the Review of Income and Wealth, edited by a sub-set (two or three persons) of the members of the program committee. To be considered for the special issue, paper givers must submit a revised version of their paper by a specified date after the conference, generally within three months of the conference. 

Papers that have undergone the peer-review process but are not selected for publication with the special issue of the Review of Income and Wealth may also be recommended for fast-track peer review with other journals, including Journal of Economics and Development, subject to the authors’ and editors’ agreement. 

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