IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v55y2019i3p366-383.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Identity Documents, Welfare Enhancement, and Group Empowerment in the Global South

Author

Listed:
  • Wendy Hunter

Abstract

Having a birth certificate is a stepping stone to acquiring an array of rights and benefits, including other documents necessary to navigate in and outside of one’s home country. Despite a birth certificate’s importance, many children in the developing world never obtain one. Whether a person does so or not often depends on ethnicity, race, gender, and age. With the rights of individuals as well as groups in mind, this article examines some of the crucial causes and consequences of not acquiring this key document. It concludes that legal empowerment matters. It also underscores what governments can do, if political will exists, to facilitate the process of birth registration and certification among citizens.

Suggested Citation

  • Wendy Hunter, 2019. "Identity Documents, Welfare Enhancement, and Group Empowerment in the Global South," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(3), pages 366-383, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:55:y:2019:i:3:p:366-383
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2018.1451637
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2018.1451637
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2018.1451637?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aimable Nsabimana & Michelle Pleace & Rachel M. Gisselquist, 2024. "Legal identity and access to the state in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2024-54, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:55:y:2019:i:3:p:366-383. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.