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Top-end inequality and growth: empirical exploration of nonlinearities and the time dimension J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Elina Tuominen
Using the series of the top 1% income shares in 137 countries, I examine the relationship between top-end inequality and subsequent economic growth from the 1920s to the 2010s. These data enable a versatile exploration of various time horizons. To address concerns regarding chosen functional forms, I employ penalized spline methods to accommodate potential nonlinearities. Empirical findings suggest
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Job polarisation and household borrowing J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Michele Cantarella, Ilja Kristian Kavonius
The last few decades have seen transformative changes to the structure of employment, which have led to a deterioration in demand for middle-skill occupations, a process known as job polarisation. As demand for middle-skill workers shrinks, expectations about households’ income through their lifetime horizon must be adjusted. It is possible that these expectations loop back into the credit system and
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The sources and structure of wage inequality changes in the selected Central-Eastern European Countries J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-27
Abstract We study the determinants of wage inequality and its fluctuations in six Central-Eastern European nations using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions microdata from 2010 to 2019. Wage disparity in these countries changed in distinct ways. Inequality in Czechia and Romania is generally steady, has fallen consistently in Poland and Slovakia, and has increased in Bulgaria
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Identification-robust methods for comparing inequality with an application to regional disparities J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 Jean-Marie Dufour, Emmanuel Flachaire, Lynda Khalaf, Abdallah Zalghout
We propose Fieller-type methods for inference on generalized entropy inequality indices in the context of the two-sample problem which covers testing the statistical significance of the difference in indices, and the construction of a confidence set for this difference. In addition to irregularities arising from thick distributional tails, standard inference procedures are prone to identification problems
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A decomposition method to evaluate the ‘paradox of progress’, with evidence for Argentina J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Javier Alejo, Leonardo Gasparini, Gabriel Montes-Rojas, Walter Sosa-Escudero
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The effects of restricted access to healthcare on vulnerable people: an analysis of the determinants of health outcomes among older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Vaida Gineikytė Kanclerė, Luka Klimavičiūtė, Marco Schito
This study investigates how restrictions in healthcare access in European countries during the COVID-19 pandemic affected health outcomes among a key group of vulnerable people: older adults. This group is vulnerable in that older adults are more susceptible to social changes and less capable of adapting, either because of individual characteristics or pre-existing structural inequalities. We employ
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A note on Sen’s representation of the Gini coefficient: Revision and repercussions J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-09 Oded Stark
Sen (1973 and 1997) presents the Gini coefficient of income inequality in a population as follows. “In any pair-wise comparison the man with the lower income can be thought to be suffering from some depression on finding his income to be lower. Let this depression be proportional to the difference in income. The sum total of all such depressions in all possible pair-wise comparisons takes us to the
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Perpetuating wage inequality: evidence from salary history bans J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-08 James Bessen, Erich Denk, Chen Meng
Pay gaps for women and minorities have persisted after accounting for observable differences. Recently, a dozen US states have banned employer access to salary histories. We analyze the effects of these salary history bans (SHBs) on private employer wage posting and pay. We develop a theoretical model of firms’ choices between posting wages and bargaining, drawing out the implications of SHBs on wages
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Degrees of vulnerability to poverty: a low-income dynamics approach for Chile J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-07
Abstract I propose an empirical framework to identify different degrees of vulnerability to poverty using two vulnerability lines that classify currently non-poor people into risk groups: high, moderate and low risk of falling into poverty in the next period. The latter corresponds to the income secure middle class. My approach makes two contributions. First, it extends recent research that defines
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Governmental support and multidimensional poverty alleviation: efficiency assessment in rural areas of Vietnam J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-03 Chinh Hoang-Duc, Hang Nguyen-Thu, Tuan Nguyen-Anh, Hiep Tran-Duc, Linh Nguyen-Thi-Thuy, Phuong Do-Hoang, Nguyen To-The, Vuong Vu-Tien, Huong Nguyen-Thi-Lan
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The Black and white differential in income and consumption dynamics J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Giacomo De Giorgi, Luca Gambetti, Costanza Naguib
With 20 years of PSID data, we document persistent racial differentials in consumption dynamics. Starting from similar positions in the consumption distribution Blacks end up in lower percentiles than Whites. Education, income, and wealth are three key drivers of these different dynamics. Blacks tend to save less, and hence have less buffer than the Whites to prevent them from falling in the lower
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Recovering income distribution in the presence of interval-censored data J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Fernando Rios-Avila, Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza, Flavia Sacco-Capurro
We propose a method to analyze interval-censored data using a multiple imputation based on a Heteroskedastic Interval regression approach. The proposed model aims to obtain a synthetic dataset that can be used for standard analysis, including standard linear regression, quantile regression, or poverty and inequality estimation. We present two applications to show the performance of our method. First
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Exploring socioeconomic-related inequality in children’s cognitive achievement in Peru J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Emmanuel Ngoy, Carla Sá, Paula Veiga
This paper applies the concentration index to estimate socioeconomic-related inequality in language skills among children aged 5 to 15, using longitudinal data from Peru. We find the existence of socioeconomic-related inequality in language skills, starting from an early age and showing little change until adolescence, albeit dropping. The cognitive achievement regression estimates highlight the significant
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Inequality and income mobility: the case of targeted and universal interventions in India J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Anindya S. Chakrabarti, Abinash Mishra, Mohsen Mohaghegh
Income interventions with pro-poor targeting is a common fiscal policy around the world. However their distributional effects on consumption and savings are not well understood. Motivated by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), we use longitudinal data on income and consumption of Indian households to estimate distributional effects of such interventions in a model
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Washing machine ownership and girls' school attendance: a cross-sectional analysis of adolescents in 19 middle-income countries J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-01-27 Omar Karlsson, Jan-Walter De Neve
Excessive work among adolescents may compromise educational development. Without home appliances, household work can take over 50 h a week and an additional 30 h when an infant is present. School-aged girls are often tasked with doing laundry, which is time-consuming and inflexible without a washing machine. We determined the association between washing machine ownership and school attendance among
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A false divide? Providing information about inequality aligns preferences for redistribution between right- and left-wing voters J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Christopher Hoy, Russell Toth, Nurina Merdikawati
Are differences in preferences for redistribution between right- and left-wing voters amplified because of misperceptions of inequality? To address this question, we conduct three nationally representative, randomized survey experiments with 7020 Australians, in which respondents are informed about either the level of national inequality and economic mobility, their position in the national income
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Spatial earnings inequality J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Christian Schluter, Mark Trede
Earnings inequality in Germany has increased dramatically. Measuring inequality locally at the level of cities annually since 1985, we find that behind this development is the rapidly worsening inequality in the largest cities, driven by increasing earnings polarisation. In the cross-section, local earnings inequality rises substantially in city size, and this city-size inequality penalty has increased
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Differential Exposure to Climate Change? Evidence from the 2021 Floods in Germany J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Moritz Odersky, Max Löffler
We analyze the exposure of different income groups to the 2021 floods in Germany, which serve as an exemplary case of natural disasters intensified by anthropogenic climate change. To this end, we link official geo-coded satellite data on flood-affected buildings to neighborhood-level information on socio-economic status. We then document the empirical relationship between flood damages and household
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What are the economic costs of childhood socio-economic disadvantage? Evidence from a pathway analysis for 27 European countries J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-12-21 Chris Clarke, Julien Bonnet, Manuel Flores, Olivier Thévenon
Growing up in socio-economic disadvantage has important and long-lasting effects on children’s lives. Children from disadvantaged households often fall behind in many areas of well-being and development, with effects that continue to limit their opportunities and outcomes – including their health and labour market outcomes – long after they reach adulthood. Drawing on Europe-wide survey data from 27
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Inequality of opportunity in access to and consumption of modern energy in Togo: A parametric approach J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Tchablemane Yenlide, Mawussé Komlagan Nézan Okey
The transformation towards cleaner energy consumption in Togo is progressing at a slow pace due to a combination of unfavourable socioeconomic, demographic, and spatial factors that favour traditional fuel use over clean and efficient energy. This study tries to quantify the inequality in modern energy access by applying the inequality of opportunity framework. We use a parametric approach to the 2015
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Life may be unfair, but do democracies make it any less burdensome? J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Ọláyínká Oyèkọ́lá
Using a large panel of countries, this paper studies whether, or not, democracies can disproportionately produce better economic outcomes for the poor than non-democracies. To deal with the endogeneity of democracy and inequality, a regional democratisation wave is used to isolate the exogenous variation in country-level democracy. Our main finding is that the exogenous component of democracy significantly
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Monetary compensation schemes during the COVID-19 pandemic: implications for household incomes, liquidity constraints and consumption across the EU J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-11-21 Michael Christl, Silvia De Poli, Francesco Figari, Tine Hufkens, Chrysa Leventi, Andrea Papini, Alberto Tumino
This paper analyses the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on household disposable income and household demand in the European Union (EU) during 2020, making use of the EU microsimulation model EUROMOD and nowcasting techniques. We show evidence of heterogeneity in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labour markets in EU Member States, with some countries hit substantially harder than others. Most
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On the social welfare interpretation of growth incidence curves J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Yonatan Berman, François Bourguignon
The Growth Incidence Curve (GIC), introduced in the poverty measurement literature by Ravallion and Chen (Econ. Lett. 78(1), 93–99, 2003), proved to be a valuable and widely used tool to analyze the impact of growth on poverty and its ‘pro-poorness’. Beyond pro-poorness, however, the relationship between the shape of GICs and social welfare is ambiguous. If a declining GIC, together with a positive
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Inequality of opportunity in educational achievement in Western Europe: contributors and channels J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Gustavo A. Marrero, Juan C. Palomino, Gabriela Sicilia
We study the contribution of students’ circumstances to inequality of opportunity in educational achievement (IOpE) in Western Europe and explore the role of intermediate channelling variables in translating differences in circumstances into educational inequalities. Using the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) database, we find that differences in households’ cultural environment
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Measuring income inequality in social networks J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-10-24 Oded Stark, Jakub Bielawski, Fryderyk Falniowski
We present a new index for measuring income inequality in networks. The index is based on income comparisons made by the members of a network who are linked with each other by direct social connections. To model the comparisons, we compose a measure of relative deprivation for networks. We base our new index on this measure. The index takes the form of a ratio: the network’s aggregate level of relative
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The distributional impact of structural transformation in rural India: case-study evidence and model-based simulation J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-10-21 Chris Elbers, Peter Lanjouw
The North Indian village of Palanpur has been the subject of close study over a period of six decades from 1957/8 to 2015. Himanshu et al. (2018) document the evolution of the village economy over this period and point to two distinct drivers of growth and distribution of income. An early period of agricultural intensification associated with the green revolution saw an expansion of irrigation and
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The impact of FDI income on income shares in home countries J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-10-20 Joseph P. Joyce
Income generated by foreign direct investments (FDI) has grown since the 1990s, and now represents a substantial portion of many countries’ current accounts. Some of these flows are routed through Special Purpose Entities in financial centers that multinational firms use to minimize their tax liabilities. We use IMF and OECD data to evaluate the impact of this income on the income share of the top
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Tax-benefit systems and the gender gap in income J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-09-30 Karina Doorley, Claire Keane
The gender wage gap and the gender work gap are sizable, persistent and well documented for many countries. The result of the gender wage and gender work gap combined is an income gap between men and women. A small literature has begun to examine how the tax-benefit system contributes to closing gender income gaps by redistributing between men and women. In this paper, we study the effect of tax-benefit
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Assortative mating and earnings inequality in South Korea J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-09-19 Nicolas Frémeaux, SeEun Jung, Arnaud Lefranc
We analyze economic assortative mating and its contribution to earnings inequality in South Korea from 1998 to 2018. Our analysis is based on cross-sectional and panel data and accounts for several methodological issues, including measurement error and sample selection bias. Despite a very high level of assortativeness in education, Korea exhibits a negative correlation in earnings between spouses
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Income developments in the great recession: status for the Danish prime-age working population a decade following the onset of the Financial Crisis J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-09-08 Mads Lybech Christensen, Anders Bruun Jonassen, Peter Fallesen
To assess the impact of the Financial Crisis and the Great Recession in Denmark this paper studies developments in Danish labor market income and disposable income from 1995 through 2019. We focus on the prime age working population of 25–54-year-old Danish citizens, with emphasis on labor market performance of the younger and less educated members of this labor force. The recession had a large and
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A European equivalence scale for public in-kind transfers J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Rolf Aaberge, Audun Langørgen, Petter Y. Lindgren
This paper introduces a theory-based equivalence scale for public in-kind transfers, which justifies comparison of distributions of extended income (cash income plus the value of public services) between European countries. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed equivalence scale in an empirical analysis of the effects of public health care, long-term care, education and childcare expenditure
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Inequality and Social Distancing during the Pandemic J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-08-28 Caitlin Brown, Martin Ravallion
We study how pre-pandemic inequalities in the United States influenced social distancing over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Richer counties tended to see more protective mobility responses in the initial (pre-pharmaceutical) phase, but less protective responses later. Near linearity of this income effect implies that inequality between counties contributed very little to overall mobility reductions
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Annualizing labor market, inequality, and poverty indicators J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-08-26 Eduardo Lora, Miguel Benítez, Diego Gutiérrez
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Poverty among same-sex couple families in the United States: Is there a premium for married couples? J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-08-18 Olga Alonso-Villar, Coral del Río
This paper explores the monetary poverty of families headed by same-sex couples, a group understudied in the poverty literature. This research contributes to the literature by documenting how same-sex couples rank with respect to different-sex couples when (a) employing poverty indicators that allow us to move beyond the poverty incidence; (b) measuring not only absolute poverty, which is the usual
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Intergenerational income mobility in Turkey J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-08-12 Nizam Melikşah Demirtaş, Orhan Torul
In this study, we examine intergenerational income mobility in Turkey using data from the Turkish Statistical Institute’s Survey of Income and Living Conditions and the TS2SLS methodology. Our findings reveal an intergenerational earnings elasticity of 0.51 between fathers and sons and 1 between fathers and daughters. This gender disparity stems from historically low female labor force participation
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The impacts of Confucianism on gender inequality in Vietnam J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Tien Manh Vu, Hiroyuki Yamada
We quantify the influences of Confucianism on gender inequality in present-day Vietnam. We use the number (or density) of the most successful test takers in the Vietnamese imperial examinations (1075–1919) in a given district as a proxy for mastering the subject of Confucianism. Using an instrumental variable approach based on the historical expansion of Vietnamese territory and distances to the test
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Assumption-light and computationally cheap inference on inequality measures by sample splitting: the Student t approach J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-07-24 Catarina Midões, Denis de Crombrugghe
Inference on inequality indices remains challenging, even in large samples. Heavy right tails in income and wealth distributions hinder the quality and threaten the validity of asymptotic approximations to finite sample distributions. Attempts to improve on asymptotic approximations by bootstrap techniques or permutation tests are only partial successes. We evaluate a different approach to robust inference
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Fair crack of the whip? The distribution of augmented wealth in Australia from 2002 to 2018 J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Maximilian Longmuir
The omission of pension wealth potentially distorts the international comparison of wealth distributions. Private pension wealth is often included in households’ wealth portfolios, while public pension claims are not. Augmented wealth, the sum of net worth and pension wealth, resolves this limitation by including the present value of social security pension wealth. This article provides a detailed
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Is there a Green Dividend of National Redistribution? J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-07-13 Eren Gürer, Alfons J. Weichenrieder
CO2 emissions are disproportionately caused by more affluent consumers. In the political debate, this fact has triggered the demand for income redistribution and wealth taxes not only to reduce inequality but also to reduce CO2 emissions. This paper calculates the possible size of a green dividend, i.e., a reduction in total national CO2 emissions, of redistribution in 26 countries and concludes that
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Regional and ethnic inequalities in Malaysian poverty dynamics J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-07-11 Gerton Rongen, Zainab Ali Ahmad, Peter Lanjouw, Kenneth Simler
This study employs a synthetic panel approach based on nationally-representative micro-level data to track poverty and income mobility in Malaysia in the period 2004–2016. On aggregate we observe large reductions in chronic poverty and increases in persistent economic security, but note that those who remain poor in 2016 are increasingly likely to be poor in a structural sense. Further, we find that
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Intergenerational income mobility: New evidence from the UK J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-06-23 Bertha Rohenkohl
Using a new dataset combining the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and Understanding Society (UKHLS), this paper examines the current state of intergenerational income mobility in the UK. This extends previous evidence in several directions, with a focus on younger cohorts of individuals born between 1973 and 1992. I find evidence of considerable intergenerational persistence in the transmission
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Intergenerational mobility in the Netherlands: models, outcomes and trends J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-06-21 Marco Colagrossi, Andrea Geraci, Gianluca Mazzarella
We reconstruct the genealogical tree of all individuals ever appearing in Dutch municipalities records starting in 1995. Combining microdata from tax authorities with education records we compute a measure of permanent income as well as education. We estimate the degree of intergenerational persistence in education and income in the population and across time, showing that it is higher than what previous
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Traces of the past in income inequality J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-05-30 Ozan Eksi
The cumulative effect on income inequality of structural economic changes can only be observed in years. We discuss the implications of this point for the empirical approach to the inequality data through a simple linear regression setting. We show that determinants of inequality can only be found by (i) specifying a dynamic model, or (ii) using the average of changes in within-cohort inequalities
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Combined and distributional effects of EPL reduction and hiring incentives: an assessment using the Italian “Jobs Act” J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Chiara Ardito, Fabio Berton, Lia Pacelli
After two decades of labour market reforms at the margin, the great recession created political scope to reduce the employment protection still benefitting the workers on open-ended contracts. To support employment levels, these policies have generally been combined with generous employment subsidies. While the theoretical and empirical literature on the two interventions taken in isolation appear
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Occupational mobility: theory and estimation for Italy J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-05-09 Irene Brunetti, Davide Fiaschi
This paper presents a model considering intergenerational occupational mobility as the joint outcome of three main determinants: income incentives, equality of opportunity and changes in the composition of occupations. The model, rationalising the use of transition matrices to measure occupational mobility, allows for identifying asymmetric mobility patterns and constructing a specific mobility index
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Gender wage inequality: new evidence from penalized expectile regression J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Marina Bonaccolto-Töpfer, Giovanni Bonaccolto
The Machado-Mata decomposition building on quantile regression has been extensively analyzed in the literature focusing on gender wage inequality. In this study, we generalize the Machado-Mata decomposition to the expectile regression framework, which, to the best of our knowledge, has never been applied in this strand of the literature. In contrast, in recent years, expectiles have gained increasing
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Distributional impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the CARES Act J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Guido Matias Cortes, Eliza Forsythe
Using data from the Current Population Survey, we investigate the distributional consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated public policy response on labor earnings and unemployment benefits in the United States up until February 2021. We find that year-on-year changes in labor earnings for employed individuals were not atypical during the pandemic months, regardless of their initial
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Beyond tax-survey combination: inequality and the blurry household-firm border J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Mauricio De Rosa, Joan Vilá
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What drives regional economic inequalities in Tunisia? Evidence from unconditional quantile decomposition analysis J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-04-15 Hatem Jemmali
The paper analyzes the urban-rural, littoral-inland, as well as metropolitan-nonmetropolitan inequalities across the entire welfare distribution. It draws on micro-data from two nationally representative surveys to investigate the structure and dynamics of regional consumption inequality in Tunisia. The analysis covers the five years before the 2011's revolution. It reveals low and stable levels of
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A distributional decomposition of birthweight differences by maternal education: A comparison of France and the UK J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-04-14 Lidia Panico, Maxime Tô
While socio-economic gradients in newborn health are well established (Currie, Am. Econ. Rev. 101(3), 1–22, 2011), understanding what produces these inequalities, and in particular the unique contribution of inter-connected mechanisms, remains difficult to estimate. We adapt decomposition methods proposed by Rothe (J. Bus. Econ. Stat. 33(3), 323–337, 2015), which isolate the marginal contribution of
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Borrower discouragement and multidimensional child deprivation in Ghana J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-04-14 Raymond Elikplim Kofinti, Isaac Koomson, James Atta Peprah
With increasing scholarly attention on child deprivation to understand its drivers and potential policies needed for its alleviation, the discouraged borrower syndrome has received little attention despite its potential role in stifling household resources needed to cater for the needs of children. Using the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey data, this study examines the effect of
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Intergenerational home ownership J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-04-05 Jo Blanden, Andrew Eyles, Stephen Machin
This paper studies intergenerational links in home ownership, an increasingly important wealth marker and a measure of economic status in itself. Repeated cross sectional UK data show that home ownership rates have fallen rapidly over time, most markedly amongst younger people in more recent birth cohorts. Evidence from British birth cohorts data supplemented by the Wealth and Assets Survey show a
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The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke index and the inequality factors: an analysis through the Gini index decomposition J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Giuseppe Pignataro, Michele Costa
In this paper, we propose an alternative methodology to capture the impact of the inequality factors on poverty by decomposing the traditional Foster-Greer-Thorbecke index. We focus on the incidence and the intensity of poverty and on the inequality of the distribution of the poor. In particular, our proposal allows to evaluate the effect of each factor on the inequality part, which is further analyzed
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Optimal income support for lone parents in the Netherlands: are we there yet? J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-03-27 Henk-Wim de Boer, Egbert Jongen
The Netherlands witnessed major reforms in income support for lone parents over the past decade, to simplify the support system and to improve the financial incentives to work. We consider whether the new system can be considered closer to ‘optimal’, using the inverse-optimal tax(ation) method. In our base model we find social welfare weights that were not monotonically declining in income before the
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Collective negative shocks and preferences for redistribution: Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Germany J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-03-18 Bellani Luna, Fazio Andrea, Scervini Francesco
Using new data from a three-wave panel survey administered in Germany between May 2020 and May 2021, this paper studies the impact of a negative shock affecting all strata of the population, such as the development of COVID-19, on preferences for redistribution. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous change in the severity of the infection rate at the county level, we show that, contrary to some theoretical
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COVID-19 and income inequality: evidence from monthly population registers J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-03-15 Nikolay Angelov, Daniel Waldenström
We measure the distributional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic using newly released population register data in Sweden. Monthly earnings inequality increased during the pandemic, and the key driver is income losses among low-paid individuals while middle- and high-income earners were almost unaffected. In terms of employment, as measured by having positive monthly earnings, the pandemic had a larger
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Demographic behaviour and earnings inequality across OECD countries J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-03-09 Leo Azzollini, Richard Breen, Brian Nolan
Many studies have focused on how demographic dynamics, such as changes in marriage patterns and the increasing share of households headed by a single adult, may contribute to rising earnings inequality. Here we instead ask how demographic differences between countries may underpin differences in household earnings inequality between them, concentrating on economic homogamy and the proportion of households
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Parenthood and the distribution of intra-household inequalities in wellbeing J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-03-07 Siobhan Austen, Jaslin Kalsi, Astghik Mavisakalyan
While there is a large body of literature on the effects of parenthood on wellbeing, an intra-household perspective has, thus far, been limited. This is an important research gap given that the experience of raising children is typically associated with interdependencies between mothers and fathers. Taking an intra-household approach, this study generates new insights into the complex puzzle of the
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Rank-correlations are not robust to differences in group inequality J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-02-28 Mikkel Høst Gandil
Rank-based measures of intergenerational mobility are generally justified by their invariance to changes in inequality. However, I show that whenever the source of inequality is uncorrelated to parent ranks, such as in the cases of gender and birth order, increasing equality leads to a fall in rank mobility as measured by the rank correlation. I develop a method to ex-post quantify the importance of
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Long-term evolution of inequality of opportunity: Educated parents still matter J. Econ. Inequal. (IF 1.55) Pub Date : 2023-01-24 Maurizio Bussolo, Daniele Checchi, Vito Peragine
Inequality of opportunity (IOp) in the four largest economies in Europe – France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom – around 2015 accounts for a significant share of inequality of incomes, between 30 and 50 percent, depending on the inequality index and using a parametric approach. Mirroring the reduction of inequality of incomes over the last three decades, the long-term trend of IOp, the focus