Economic Inequality Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

An electronic version of the paper may be downloaded • from the SSRN website: www.SSRN.com • from the CESifo website: www.CESifo.de * We would like to thank Mikael Lindahl and Daniele Checchi for sharing their datasets. We are also grateful to Robert Shimer, Giorgio Primiceri and Alan Krueger for helpful comments. EDUCATION, GROWTH AND INCOME INEQUALITY Coen Teulings Thijs van Rens* CESifo Working Paper No. 653 (4)

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- Economics, Econometrics, Higher Education, Human Capital

This article introduces the first version of a new, standardized data tool that can be used to test models of global income allocation, the Standardized Income Distribution Database (SIDD). It is based on a comprehensive collection of income distribution data compiled by the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER 2000). International and intertemporal inconsistencies in these data have historically limited its use. We estimate adjustment factors for different scopes of coverage, income definitions, and reference units which, when applied to the raw data, bring all data to a common standard based on national coverage, gross income, and household per capita inequality. Criterion validity checks confirm that these adjustments boost the correlation between measured income inequality and national social indicators. The SIDD is also clean, free of duplicates, and easy to access. The SIDD will be useful both to students reading income inequality and to those conducting broad cross-national research on the relationship between income inequality and a range of important outcomes, such as health, criminality, and social support. Country and decades Country and decades Algeria,

- by María José Álvarez-Rivadulla
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- Sociology, Economics, Data Analysis, Economic Inequality

Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre-industrial incomes as unequal as they are today? For want of sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered. This paper infers inequality across individuals within each of the 28 pre-industrial societies, for which data were available, using what are known as social tables, stretching from the Roman Empire 14 AD, to Byzantium in 1000, to England in 1688, to Nueva España around 1790, to China in 1880 and to British India in 1947. It applies two new concepts in making those assessments – what we call the inequality possibility frontier and the inequality extraction ratio. The two new concepts compare the observed income inequality to the maximum feasible inequality that, at a given level of income, might have been “extracted” by those in power. The results, especially when contrasted with modern countries, give new insights into the connection between inequality and economic development in the very long run.

- by Branko Milanovic
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- Economic Inequality
- by Michael R. Krätke
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- Sociology, Political Economy, Capitalism, Economic Inequality

This paper will argue that wealth and income inequality are among the most pressing issues for contemporary social work. Despite this, social work as a discipline and profession has, in the main, been slow to respond to this growing problem. Critical approaches to social work, however, have always included a commitment to eliminating poverty, promoting equity and addressing both the causes and consequences of socio-economic disadvantage as a core priority. This paper will discuss the contributions critical social work can make to socially informed and ethical responses, particularly through its critical pedagogic, reflective and activist practices in contesting wealth and income inequality.

- by Christine Morley
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- Economics, Social Work, Social Policy, Economic Inequality

This chapter provides an overview of long-term changes in wealth inequality, measured as net marketable wealth, based on two measures: the Gini index and the wealth share of the richest 10%. The chapter relies on current databases such as the World Inequality Database (WID) but expands considerably the time series for a range of countries by building upon the most recent research and by producing new estimates. For five Western countries (France, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States) it has been possible to provide estimates covering the period from 1820 to 2010. However, for other Western countries as well as for other areas of the world, much more work is needed before we can assess long-term trends in wealth inequality. Our data confirm the general picture of a creeping increase in inequality during the 19th century, followed by declines from the onset of World War I (1914) until the 1960s, and in many (but not all) countries a new tendency towards higher inequality since the 1970s. An overview of possible explanations for such trends is provided. The correlation of wealth inequality with per capita GDP is found to be quite weak and not always positive, implying that higher wealth inequality cannot be considered a simple side effect of economic growth.

- by Guido Alfani
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- Economic History, Economic Inequality, Inequality (Economics), Nineteenth Century

Utilising a globalisation framework this study contributes to discussions concerning inequality, education, and development by re‐examining the effects of educational and economic variables on income inequality. This research shows that the effects of education on income inequality are affected by the level of economic freedom in a country, and specifically that more economic liberalisation may limit the equalising effects of secondary enrolments. These findings imply that the level of economic freedom must be considered when creating policies to reduce inequality and that complex relationships must be considered for further research in this area.

- by ryan wells
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- Sociology, Economics, Neo Liberalism, Economic Inequality

Democratic theory does not require the government just to respond to citizens’ preferences for policy
but in doing so, to treat all citizens as political equals. It follows that, in democracies, government
policy should respond equally to different economic classes: if the policy preferences of the rich and
the poor differ, then policy should reflect no less the preferences of the poor than those of the rich.
Whether this is indeed happens becomes all the more relevant in the context of the current financial
and economic crisis. In Europe, policy solutions to the crisis, namely austerity, including budget and
wage cuts that hurt the middle and lower classes, have been met with fierce public resistance. Popular
dissatisfaction with policy raises the questions: Does policy respond to public attitudes towards
policies? To which sub-constituency’s preferences does government policy respond? Do policy
outputs reflect the preferences and attitudes of the rich rather than low-income citizens? To answer
these questions, we introduce a new data set covering policy and public opinion across a range of
issues, countries, and times. We first examine variation in public attitudes across 15 policy issues
throughout time. We focus on whether citizens’ attitudes towards income inequality, their preferences
for government spending in key policy areas and their attitudes towards policy issues differ according
to income. Second, we investigate whether government responsiveness differs across income groups
over time and present new evidence of policy responsiveness and inequality in Europe.

- by Michael Donnelly and +1
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- Democracy, Economic Inequality, Political Representation, Income inequality

This paper examines the incidence and consequences
of financialization in the industrialized countries of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD). Using the latest panel data from the OECD and the
ILO, the paper first documents the extent of financialization in
OECD countries and then analyzes the relationships between
financialization and three other variables: inequality, growth and
unemployment. There is strong empirical evidence for
considerable financialization across the OECD, with significant
and negative impacts on all three variables.

- by Jacob Assa
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- Finance, Development Economics, Financial Economics, Public Economics
- by Obeng-Odoom Franklin and +2
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- Political Economy, Development Studies, Economic Inequality

This paper will argue that wealth and income inequality are among the most pressing issues for contemporary social work. Despite this, social work as a discipline and profession has, in the main, been slow to respond to this growing problem. Critical approaches to social work, however, have always included a commitment to eliminating poverty, promoting equity and addressing both the causes and consequences of socio-economic disadvantage as a core priority. This paper will discuss that contributions critical social work can make to socially informed and ethical responses, particularly through its critical pedagogic, reflective and activist practices in contesting wealth and income inequality.

- by Christine Morley and +1
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- Social Work, Social Policy, Economic Inequality, Social Work Education

Recognizes that despite resurgent American optimism in mid-2021, after a fearful year and a half of coronavirus pandemic, the faith and hope of the people remain subdued because of existential threats to our democracy, particularly Republican-led legislative assaults on voting rights and nonpartisan electoral administration. Identifies in these developments the central role of a growing fascist oligarchy, populated by a brotherhood of billionaires. Considers the tortuous path ahead for community organizing and the essential role of the profession's treasured legacy. Proposes a strategic vision to achieve institutionalized, structural empowerment of the demos, to revitalize and redirect the nation's democratic institutions.

- by Moshe ben Asher
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- Community Organizing, Fascism, Direct Democracy, Economic Inequality

This paper explores how philosophical inquiry and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can mutually benefit from each other to produce new methodological and reflexive directions in neo-liberal policy research to examine the phenomenon of ‘What is (going on here)’. Through this we argue that augmenting linguistic analysis with philosophical perspectives develops and supports CDA scholarship more broadly by accommodating the shifting complexity of social problems of ideologically driven inequality that are inbuilt through, in our case, social policy texts. In discussing philosophical-methodological issues, the paper argues for the need to continually adapt CDA to the particular data so as to remain sensitive to and avoid hegemonic tendencies in analysis. Through adopting the principles of a working methodology, we discuss a micro-meso-macro CDA framework that draws on the analytical concepts of movement, metaphorical superfluidity, thematic condensation, and surrealism to conceive of a research approach capable of examining and comprehending evolving discourses of political economies. The most immediate benefit of this framework is its capacity to illustrate how forms of valuations perpetuated by and through policy discourse are the motivational locus of meaning making insofar as they strongly inform the moral underpinning the ideology of economic growth.

- by Nadira Talib and +1
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- Critical Theory, Business, Business Ethics, Discourse Analysis

Forthcoming in Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy

- by Phillip Ablett
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- Economics, Social Work, Social Policy, Economic Inequality

Poverty is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Of its many sides, the economic one is obviously among the most prominent, because the condition of poverty intuitively references inadequate access to resources. It is not surprising, then, that many economic historians have dedicated at least some attention to poverty and the poor – although rarely with a systematic, let alone a comparative, approach. This is because the economic side of poverty remains one among many, and when we intend to explore those aspects that could be expected to be dearest to economic historians, for example measuring the intensity and the prevalence of poverty across time and in different societies, the subject matter immediately becomes very complicated and somewhat disconcerting. This chapter provides an overview of economic-historical research on poverty, and highlights some new approaches that might prove helpful in overcoming some of the limitations of the erlier literature.

- by Guido Alfani
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- Economic History, Poverty, Economic Inequality, Social Inequality

This paper presents detailed methods for constructing a flexible philosophical–analytical model through which to apply the analytic principles of CDA for the interpretation of metaphors across policy texts. Drawing on a theoretical framing from Foucault and the augmentation of Nietzsche’s views on valuation, we sketch a framework for examining ways in which evaluative semantic categories can be linked to sociological theories in order to bring out their relevance for the purpose of critical discourse analysis. This multi-level research framework draws upon a relationship between language analysis, the philosophical study of valuation, and political economy as a composite formulation of values through which neo-liberalism is discursively entwined and progressed through a system of principles of e/valuation.

- by Nadira Talib and +1
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- Critical Theory, Business, Business Administration, Business Ethics

Reflecting current concerns about economic inequality, scholars who study the pre-modern past are increasingly addressing this issue. The obstacles to measuring the distribution of income or wealth in the ancient Roman world are formidable. Only a few highly localized datasets are available. Any appraisal of conditions in the Roman empire as a whole therefore requires parametric modeling. Building on earlier work by Scheidel and Friesen (2009), this paper explores new ways of establishing plausible parameters for a probabilistic reconstruction of the total size of Roman wealth and the share held by the top tier of society.

- by paramjit singh
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- Capitalism, Economic Inequality, Poverty and Inequality

A data-intensive look at the U.S. middle class's financial problems, and their relationship with America's social programs.

Earlier research on poverty failed to provide us with consistent measures of its prevalence across space and time. This is due to the limitations of the available sources and to the difficulty of applying to them the poverty definitions of modern social science. This article discusses different possible approaches to poverty measurement and the problems encountered when applying them to historical sources. Thereafter it proposes a way to measure absolute and, more importantly, relative poverty which makes good use of the information made available by recent research on inequality. We detect a long-run tendency towards an increase in the prevalence of poverty, both in the South and in the North of Europe. This trend was only temporarily interrupted by large-scale plague and other catastrophes, although the Black Death had stronger and more persistent poverty-reducing effects. Our approach, which this article applies mostly to Italy, the Low Countries and partially Germany and other areas, could be used for even broader international comparisons.

- by Guido Alfani and +1
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- Poverty, Economic Inequality, Italy, Social Inequality

This chapter looks at poverty from a perspective which argues that the conscious and deliberate perpetuation of poverty is a form of fundamentalism with its associated principles and values. There are people who are parasitic and are incessantly feeding off and on the sweat of the 'povertised' of society. The chapter explores how poverty prevents the fulfilment and enjoyment of human rights and results in the deferral and postponement, abandonment and foregoing of the destination of people as happiness, freedom, self-and collective affirmation, and self-actualisation. It explains why poverty, as a form of fundamentalism, affects many Africans relative to other groups from different continents. Furthermore, it explores the ways in which what I call appropriates are complicit in the perpetuation of poverty and the fundamentalism associated with it. It also examines how the measurement of poverty speaks to the 'fundamentalisation' of poverty. This is evident in the manner in which poverty statistics are derived and interpreted to express the primacy of the exclusivity of the rich and a system of neoliberalism in which the 'trickle-down effect' – a hollow hypothesis-that should benefit the so-called poor has yet to materialise for inclusivity. The first part of this chapter discusses the povertisation of the masses through the processes of appropriation. The term 'povertised' is deliberately used to show that the povertisation of the masses is a deliberate outcome of a process of making people poor – a form of poverty production. Poverty is neither accidental nor inevitable. Povertisation gives this notion the elements of a process as opposed to being an event; it systematises poverty, and makes it

- by Oliver Mtapuri
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- Sociology, Economic Sociology, Developmental Psychology, Development Economics

This paper steps into recent debates concerning the (f)utility of neoliberalism as an ‘actually existing’ concept by reminding the reader that without a Marxian political economy approach, one that specifically includes neoliberalisation as part of its theoretical edifice, we run the risk of obfuscating the reality of capitalism’s festering poverty, rising inequality, and ongoing geographies of violence as something unknowable and ‘out there’. By failing to acknowledge such nonillusory effects of neoliberalisation and refusing the explanatory power neoliberalism holds in relating similar constellations of experiences across space as a potential basis for emancipation, we precipitously ensure the prospect of a violent future.

- by Simon Springer
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- Critical Theory, Economic History, Sociology, Economic Sociology

Rawls's theory of justice has been criticized for allowing individuals by their own voluntary choice to make themselves members of the 'least advantaged' class and thereby eligible, albeit undeservedly, for the benefits mandated by the Difference Principle. I argue, first, that this criticism overlooks the fact that the Difference Principle applies only to the lifetime expectations of representative persons and, second, that it is possible to implement the Difference Principle (and the social minimum) through policies that do not create work disincentives or require making objectionable moral judgments about who is and who is not deserving of assistance.

- by Walter Schaller
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- Distributive Justice, Economic Inequality, John Rawls, Difference Principle

Multidimensional measures provide an alternative lens through which poverty may be viewed and understood. In recent work we have attempted to offer a practical approach to identifying the poor and measuring aggregate poverty (Alkire and Foster 2011). As this is quite a departure from traditional unidimensional and multidimensional poverty measurement -particularly with respect to the identification step -further elaboration may be warranted. In this paper we elucidate the strengths, limitations, and misunderstandings of multidimensional poverty measurement in order to clarify the debate and catalyse further research. We begin with general definitions of unidimensional and multidimensional methodologies for measuring poverty. We provide an intuitive description of our measurement approach, including a 'dual cutoff' identification step that views poverty as the state of being multiply deprived, and an aggregation step based on the traditional FGT measures. We briefly discuss five characteristics of our methodology that are easily overlooked or mistaken and conclude with some brief remarks on the way forward.

- by Sabina Alkire
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- Economic Inequality, Applied Economics, Poverty Measurement

The paper extends existing work on inequality and economic development by estimating a crosscountry structural model that identifies bi-directional relationships between income inequality and other indicators of social and economic development. Overall, lower inequality is associated with improvements in other development indicators, but this is the result of several complex interactions. The most striking feature of the structural model is the insight it provides into the reasons behind the negative "Africa dummy" in previous crosscountry growth studies.

- by Sebastián Torres
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- Economic Inequality, Applied Economics

A draft version of a review essay forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics

- by David Lay Williams
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- Economics, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Ethics

Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) are conventionally recommended in mental health
care literature as an important way to offer holistic treatment provision to patients. This
study aims to explore multidisciplinary teamwork in contemporary mental health
settings, particularly what aids and hinders the process of multidisciplinary teamworking,
and the social work contribution in such teams. In order to attain an in-depth
exploration of these phenomena, a single case study design was employed. Within this
design, data were generated through semi-structured interviews and structured
observation of a mental health MDT in Ireland. These data were analysed using
interpretative phenomenological analysis. The research highlights how the concept of
mental illness is contested within this MDT, with the medical model dominant within
an environment of fluid working arrangements. Professional role blurring and
stereotyping were found to impact the division of labour on this team, with role
negotiation found to be an integral part of retaining a professional’s practice identity.
This research raises concerns for social work’s capacity to function within mental
health MDTs in Ireland, and highlights ways in which social work educators might
respond in order to empower Irish social workers to meet the challenges of mental
health multidisciplinary teamworking.

- by Alan Maddock
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- Organizational Behavior, Buddhism, History, Cultural History

We show how classic source-decomposition and subgroup-decomposition methods can be reconciled with regression methodology used in the recent literature. We also highlight some pitfalls that arise from uncritical use of the regression approach. The LIS database is used to compare the approaches using an analysis of the changing contributions to inequality in the United States and Finland.

- by Frank Cowell
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- Decomposition, Economic Inequality, Applied Economics, Inequality

This paper analyzes how advanced Medieval and Early Modern Italian economies attempted to cope with famines. First, it provides an overview of the occurrence of famines and food shortages in Italy from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, underlining the connections with overall climatic and demographic trends. Second, it focuses on the 1590s famine (the worst to affect Italy in the period), providing a general discussion and interpretation of its causes and characteristics, and describing and evaluating the strategies for coping with the crisis that developed within the Republic of Genoa and the Duchy of Ferrara. The article argues that when such a large-scale food crisis as that of the 1590s occurred, public action played a key role in providing relief.

- by Guido Alfani
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- Economic History, Historical Demography, Economic Inequality, Social Mobility
- by Daniel P Horan
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- Economics, Marxism, History of Christianity, Spirituality

The main purpose of this paper is to propose the hypothesis that inequality was essential for the sustainability and ‘development’ of early agriculturally based societies that developed in Prehistory and Ancient History. This was so for varied reasons: there was a need for some members of societies - the dominant class also called the elite - to escape from the Malthusian trap. In most cases, agriculture produced a bigger economic surplus eventually. Managerial problems – such as the ones associated with storage, the division of labor, irrigation, trade –being part of the consequences of the Neolithic revolution, created pressures to develop more centralized political organizations, a process which led later to the formation of the early states. This process allowed the appearance of powerful local chiefs who changed the nature of their original communities with new forms of social organization, in which one individual and his enlarged family - transformed into a ruling elite - received the benefits of the labor of a large number of serfs belonging to less-favored communities in neighboring areas. Although the surplus appropriated by the elite was used in specific ways – consumption, investments and expenditures on armed forces - it increased the power and wealth of these societies, albeit a solution involving unequally distributed wealth. While this is not the only factor in the growing dominance of agriculturally based societies, it is one of main ones as is evidenced by considering six early civilizations resulting from the Neolithic revolution. This result involves an important modification of Malthus’ theory. However, inequality - though necessary - was not a sufficient condition for the sustainability and economic development of these early societies.

- by Serge Svizzero and +1
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- Economic History, Economic Sociology, Economics, Economic Anthropology

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope research on past populations in the Iberian Neolithic has emphasized the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. This study provides the first isotopic insights into the diet and subsistence economy of Early and Middle Neolithic populations from open-air sites in interior north-central Iberia. We present bone collagen carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope ratios for 44 humans and 33 animals recovered from six cemeteries of the Ebro valley and the northern Iberian Plateau. The results obtained are consistent with the C 3 terrestrial diets typical of other contemporary southwestern European populations, but the spacing between human and herbivore values from Los Cascajos and Paternanbidea sites is higher than expected, and a significant positive correlation is identified between the δ13C and δ15N human values at both. Moreover, the results clearly differ from those of the Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic in the same region, which show significantly lower δ13C and δ15N values. These findings contribute to an understanding of the implementation of an agro-pastoral economy in interior Iberia, suggesting a stronger reliance on animal foods among the first Neolithic groups of inner Iberia than in subsequent periods as well as differential access to some resources (possibly suckling herbivores) in the diet, which may point to the existence of early social or economic inequalities that do not seem to be linked to age and sex parameters or to mortuary treatment.

- by Teresa Fernández-Crespo and +3
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- Stable Isotope Analysis, Paleodiet, Stable Isotopes, Neolithic Archaeology

Recent research suggests that inequality increased almost continuously from the Middle Ages until the Industrial Revolution. In this article we explore whether this reflects a change in how an unequal distribution of property/income was perceived. Using large databases of manuscripts and printed editions covering ca. 1100-1830, we measure the occurrences over time of keywords bearing on the notions of equality/inequality. We then analyze key texts in depth to discover how and when these keywords acquired an economic meaning. Lastly, we relate changes in meaning to changes in levels of economic inequality. We demonstrate that the notions of equal-ity/inequality acquired economic meanings only over a long span of time. This process intensified in the decades preceding the French Revolution, suggesting that changes in inequality levels helped to brew political upheaval in the Age of Revolution.

- by Guido Alfani and +1
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- Economic History, Poverty, Equality, Economic Inequality

The motivation of this research comes from United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) and their impacts by 2030. The UN highlighted 17 SDGs that address relevant local and global issues, one of which is the 10th SDG goal of reducing inequality. This study aims to determine the effect of the Human Development Index, GDP per capita, foreign investment, national investment and average years of schooling on income inequality in Indonesia during the period 2010 to 2020. This study uses panel data regression analysis, with research data that obtained from publications provided by Central Bureau of Statistics. The results showed that the Human Development Index variable and Mean Years of Schooling negative and significant effect on income inequality. This shows that the Human Development Index and mean years of schooling can reduce income inequality in Indonesia.

- by Reska Resmawati
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- Economics, Economic Inequality, Inequality
- by Pinky Hota
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- Cultural Psychology, Economic Inequality

In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement moved to the fore. Many Americans understood for the first time that racism persists in countless aspects of American society and that the legacy of our past is deep and structural. The legal academy, and higher education more broadly, responded by hiring more racialized scholars and making curricular changes. While I salute this effort, I argue that law schools chose to take the easiest path, instead of seizing the opportunity to question, and challenge, the structure and nature of legal education. I consider the structural characteristics of legal education that contribute to the exclusion of racialized and historically marginalized groups. I conclude that meaningfully advancing equity in our law schools, and responding to the Black Lives Matter movement, will remain hindered by the structure and nature of legal education – its soul. To truly challenge the legacy of racism, we will need to challenge the soul of legal education.

- by Phil Lord
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- Law, Legal Education, Critical Race Studies, Race and Racism