Documents social inequality 1 515 results

"Existe-t-il un lien statistique entre les changements de situation familiale et l'accès à la formation continue ? Cet article cherche à répondre à cette question à partir d'une analyse empirique effectuée sur les enquêtes Emploi en continu de 2003 à 2012. Si les résultats montrent que les naissances sont associées à une diminution de la probabilité d'être formées pour les femmes, ils suggèrent que l'entrée des enfants dans le système scolaire constitue une opportunité permettant aux individus les plus diplômés d'accroître leur participation aux formations d'entreprise. Les mises en couple et séparations sont par ailleurs associées à des inégalités entre sexes dans l'accès aux formations : la rupture d'une union est négativement corrélée avec la probabilité de suivre une formation d'entreprise, notamment pour les femmes qui ont la garde de leurs enfants. Pour les formations proposées par un organisme de placement, majoritairement à destination des chômeurs, il semble que c'est moins la répartition de la garde des enfants que la situation professionnelle des conjoints au moment de la rupture qui importe."

"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."

"Scholars studying democracy are just beginning to investigate the specifically political consequences of rising socio-economic inequalities. This paper analyses whether the degree of political inequality between social groups is shaped by features of the welfare capitalist system. Specifically, we hypothesize that more labour protection and social support decrease participatory inequality via more evenly distributed resources and engagement between high- and low educated citizens. Our regression analyses combining micro- and macro-level data from 37 capitalist democracies over the past 20 years provide evidence that some protective and supportive elements of welfare capitalism reduce education-based participatory inequality. Our fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis identifies three functionally equivalent types of welfare capitalism that all produce low participatory inequality via increased protection, support or both. Finally, we empirically demonstrate that the mechanisms behind this link are, indeed, a more equal distribution of resources and engagement across low- and high educated citizens."

"This article considers the evolution of UK labour market policy during the last 30 years. It does this through the lens of the ‘social model'. The social model encompasses the employment relations system, the social welfare system, and the education and training system. It was changed dramatically by the Thatcher and Major governments. The succeeding Labour and Coalition governments largely embraced this new model and, in some ways, increased the pace of change. The consequences for labour market performance—employment, unemployment, productivity, and inequality—are explored."

"In various writings Karl Marx made references to an ‘aristocracy of finance' in Western Europe and the USA that dominated ownership of the public debt. Drawing on original research, this article offers the first comprehensive analysis of public debt ownership within the US corporate sector. The research shows that over the past three decades, and especially in the context of the current crisis, a new aristocracy of finance has emerged, as holdings of the public debt have become rapidly concentrated in favour of large corporations classified within Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Operationalizing Wolfgang Streeck's concept of the ‘debt state', the article goes on to demonstrate how concentration in ownership of the public debt reinforces patterns of social inequality and proceeds in tandem with a shift in government policy, one that prioritizes the interests of government bondholders over the general citizenry."

"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."

"Since the mid-1990s, there has been a debate about the social investment state model in advanced societies. Such an orientation towards preventive investment in education rather than redistribution (or social spending) raises the question of whether, and if so, what kinds of relationships exist between educational and economic inequalities. Based on an international comparison of 20 advanced economies, the results of the analyses suggest that the role of education as an ‘equalizer' should not be overestimated. Direct redistribution is much more likely than education to combat poverty in advanced societies. Yet increasing the mean literacy rate by reducing the proportion of low-literate adults is also positively associated with less economic inequality. Welfare states with ‘double liability'—investing in children's education and in more equal family conditions—therefore perform best in terms of economic inequality."

"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."