Documents income distribution 1 087 results

"This study addresses the central question in political economy how the objectives of attaining economic growth and restricting income inequality are related. Thus far few studies explicitly distinguish between effects of income inequality as such and effects of redistributing public interventions to equalize incomes on economic growth. In fact, most studies rely on data that do not make this distinction properly and in which top-coding is applied so that enrichment at the top end of the distribution is not adequately captured. This study aims to contribute using a pooled time-series cross-section design covering 29 countries, using OECD, LIS, and World Top Income data. No robust association between inequality and growth or redistribution and growth is found. Yet there are signs for a positive association between top incomes and growth, although the coefficient is small and a causal interpretation does not seem to be warranted."

"L'Ires continua il monitoraggio sui temi dei redditi da lavoro, della contrattazione e della produttività in Italia e in Europa. Concertazione e politica dei redditi nella XV legislatura, la rincorsa delle retribuzioni, i salari e la contrattazione della flessibilità, la condizione economica delle famiglie. Nel volume viene analizzato l'impatto delle politiche economiche del periodo di governo di centrodestra sui redditi, e vengono raffrontati i risultati dell'esame con gli effetti delle misure economiche varate dal governo di centrosinistra nella Finanziaria 2007. "

"This paper develops a simulation approach to study the effects of income transfers on material deprivation. The method is applied to pre-recession and post-austerity EU-SILC data for Germany, Greece, Poland and the United Kingdom. The results show that income transfers can not only reduce income poverty but they can also substantially reduce the extent and depth of material deprivation. Changes in social transfers have therefore a two-fold effect on the Europe 2020 poverty reduction target."

"Using firm-level data for the period 2004 to 2013, this article examines the connection between the financialization of French corporations and functional income distribution in the non-finance sector of the economy. Financialization of French non-financial corporations has increased their dependence on earnings through financial channels, and diminished labor bargaining power in income distribution. We examine the effects of these financial revenues on wage share using a panel data model of 6980 French non-financial firms. We conclude that increased dependence on financial profits is likely to decrease wage share in non-financial corporations. Moreover, this variable is more influential in our model than the other variables usually identified by the literature as determinants of functional income distribution, such as trade openness or labor market institutions. Of the determinants traditionally emphasized by the literature, only technological change has a greater impact than financialization."

"This paper presents findings on the changing effectiveness of cash transfers and income taxes on inequality and poverty reduction in four EU countries – the UK, Italy, Sweden and France. We use long time series (spanning four decades) to examine trends within countries over time and between countries at different points in time. Recent evidence has suggested that the relationship between concentration of cash transfers and their redistributive effectiveness has become blurred over time. We find much more conclusive evidence of a negative relationship within countries over time. The results show a negative relationship between the concentration of cash transfers net of direct taxes and their effectiveness in terms of reducing poverty and inequality. The strength of the relationship varies between countries and in some cases between the all age and the working age populations. The evidence suggests that caution should be applied to relying on bivariate cross-country estimates and that more should be done to establish and verify empirical relationships within countries over time using the rich data sources that are now available. These findings re-open the debate on the most effective design of cash transfer and direct tax systems."

"In this paper, we analyze poverty dynamics in Europe for the period 1994-2001 using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) and for the period 2005-2008 using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). The study first focuses on poverty profiles which depict the poverty duration, recurrence and persistence and then on the trigger events (income, demographic, labour market) associated with movements into and out of poverty, using a modified version of the Bane and Ellwood (1986) framework of event analysis. Multivariate logit analysis is employed at a second step in order to identify the socioeconomic factors that affect the transitions into and out of poverty. Cross-country differences, as well as differences in poverty dynamic trends between the two periods, are examined. Poverty profiles show a consistency with the welfare regime typology during the period 1994-2001, but the results are not entirely clear in the pre-crisis period. Moreover, the results show that new Member-States cannot be clustered into one group. The results differ significantly across countries when the events associated with poverty exits and entries are examined in detail with the event and multivariate logit analysis, reflecting the different importance of the various household income components, as well as the different effect that the 2 demographic changes have to transitions into and out of poverty in each country. The general patterns that can be observed are five: a) In both periods, income events and especially changes in head's labour earnings seem to be highly associated with poverty transitions in all countries, but more so in the Mediterranean countries, while demographic events seem to be relatively more important in Northern countries; b) Employment events are more important for ending a poverty spell than unemployment events for starting a poverty spell; c) The importance of second income earners (finding a job or increasing earnings) for bringing the household out of poverty was established in both periods; d) The demographic events have a stronger effect in the EU-SILC than the ECHP for poverty entries and weaker for poverty exits; e) The socioeconomic characteristics of the household and the household head present a rather similar patterns across countries in both periods examined."

"How do house prices affect variation in school quality and citizen satisfaction with education? In this paper, we show that the structure of socio-economic inequality produced by the housing market has dramatic effects on both citizen's preferences over education and its provision, along the lines suggested by scholars in the tradition of Tiebout. In particular, growing housing prices permit wealthier individuals to ‘target' education in ways that exclude lower income citizens. Districts with higher house prices have higher average academic performance but also greater variation in performance and a greater number of schools opting out of local authority control. Moreover, in districts with high variation in school performance, owners of expensive housing are more satisfied with schooling than are non-owners, with the reverse pattern obtaining in districts with low academic variation."

"This article analyses the determinants of market income distribution and governmental redistribution. The dependent variables are Luxembourg Income Study data on market income inequality (measured by the Gini index) for households with a head aged 25–59 years and the per cent reduction in the Gini index by taxes and transfers. We test the generalizability of the Goldin–Katz hypothesis that inequality has increased in the USA because the country failed to invest sufficiently in education. The main determinants of market income inequality are (in order of size of the effect) family structure (single mother households), union density, deindustrialization, unemployment, employment levels and education spending. The main determinants of redistribution are (in order of magnitude) left government, family structure, welfare state generosity, unemployment and employment levels. Redistribution rises mainly because needs rise (that is, unemployment and single mother households increase), not because social policy becomes more redistributive."

"Recently, White (2007) analysed the international inequalities in ecological footprints per capita (EF hereafter) based on a two-factor decomposition of an index from the Atkinson family (Atkinson, 1970). Specifically, this paper evaluated the separate role of environment intensity (EF/GDP) and average income as explanatory factors for these global inequalities. However, in addition to other comments on their appeal, this decomposition suffers from the serious limitation of the omission of the role exerted by probable factorial correlation (York et al., 2005). This paper proposes, by way of an alternative, a decomposition of a conceptually similar index like Theil's (1967) which, in effect, permits clear decomposition in terms of the role of both factors plus an inter-factor correlation, in line with Duro and Padilla (2006). This decomposition might, in turn, be extended to group inequality components (Shorrocks, 1980), an analysis that cannot be conducted in the case of the Atkinson indices. The proposed methodology is implemented empirically with the aim of analysing the international inequalities in EF per capita for the 1980–2007 period and, amongst other results, we find that, indeed, the interactive component explains, to a significant extent, the apparent pattern of stability observed in overall international inequalities."