Search

This paper estimates the effect of globalization on the implicit tax rates (ITRs) on capital income, labor income, and consumption, and the share of social protection expenditures in total public expenditures in Western and Eastern Europe. It tests the coexistence of efficiency and compensation effects of globalization on the expenditure and the revenue sides of government budgets. In Western Europe, globalization leads to an increase in social expenditures; however, these expenditures are to an increasing extent financed by taxes on labor. There are important differences between the welfare states. In the conservative regimes, both social expenditures and taxes on labor increase due to globalization. In the social-democratic regimes social expenditures are not affected by globalization, but the ITR on labor increases, whereas ITRs on capital and consumption decrease as a result of globalization. In the liberal regimes, the ITR on labor is rising, while social expenditures are declining. In the southern welfare regime globalization does not have any significant effects on the distribution of taxes or social spending. In Eastern Europe, in the Baltic states globalization leads to a decrease in social spending, whereas in the other Central and Eastern European New Member States (postcommunist European regimes) there is an upward convergence in social spending due to globalization. The ITRs on consumption decrease due to globalization in the postcommunist European regimes, whereas in the Baltic states there is no robust significant effect of globalization on taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides insight into the way in which state-led gentrification unfolded in three neighbourhoods in Amsterdam and The Hague. Although Dutch gentrification has been comparatively mild, state actors increasingly adopted gentrification as a policy tool. However, the Netherlands provides a particular context for state-led gentrification. First, the national government plays a key role, as regeneration policies increasingly promoted gentrification as an instrument for differentiating the housing stock and as necessary to prevent social problems and decline. These goals are adopted by local governments in neighbourhood regeneration. Second, housing associations are important stimulators of gentrification. They are hybrid organizations: although their task is providing affordable housing, they are also market-oriented actors who generate income from market activities. However, power inequalities between actors, different objectives and priorities of actors and different local contexts resulted in processes of negotiation and consequently, diverse regeneration strategies. Although interventions are moving into a neoliberal direction, governments and housing associations still form a strong buffer between market interventions and neighbourhood development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saving for retirement is fraught with risk and uncertainty. For those not privileged by participation in a denned benefit pension plan, the issue is made complex by problematic decision rules: the options available are variable in terms of their costs and possible consequences, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the anticipated outcomes of different options, and it is quite unclear whether conventional savings instruments are better or worse than simply relying upon housing and property. In this paper the problem of saving for the future is conceptualised and interrogated against respondents' views and opinions as reported in the Money section of The Sunday Times. Those interviewed are representative of a distinctive segment of the UK working population and face, more than most, the prospect of being largely responsible for their retirement income. Due regard is paid to the age and reported incomes of respondents in relation to their professed intentions just as consideration is given to their apparent risk predispositions. It is noted that many respondents preferred property over pensions across the four years considered-from the peak of the bubble through to the onset of the age of austerity. An interpretation of this preference is offered, emphasising the control of risk apparent in many people's perceptions of the value of property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although we know a lot about why households choose certain dwellings, we know relatively little about the mechanisms behind their choice of neighbourhood. Most studies of neighbourhood choice focus only on one or two dimensions of neighbourhoods: typically poverty and ethnicity. In this paper we argue that neighbourhoods have multiple dimensions and that models of neighbourhood choice should take these dimensions into account. We propose the use of a conditional logit model. From this approach we can gain insight into the interaction between individual and neighbourhood characteristics which lead to the choice of a particular neighbourhood over alternative destinations. We use Swedish register data to model neighbourhood choice for all households which moved in the city of Uppsala between 1997 and 2006. Our results show that neighbourhood sorting is a highly structured process where households are very likely to choose neighbourhoods where the neighbourhood population matches their own characteristics. We find that income is the most important driver of the sorting process, although ethnicity and other demographic and socioeconomic characteristics play important roles as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the emerging body of literature examining the interregional income migration in the United States and offers explanations for why certain areas emerge as magnets for nonearnings income flows while other areas are losing this increasingly important source of personal income. By synthesizing ideas from contemporary understandings of life-course influences on migration and earlier work on income migration, the paper builds a theoretical model of factors shaping income migration across space and tests the model with evidence from Census 2000 by using both ordinary least squares and geographically weighted regression techniques. The analysis highlights the importance of life-course understandings of migration in shaping nonearnings income flows across space. Demographic factors such as concentrations of married couples with no children combine with quality-of-life and economic variables to explain nonearnings income migration. Other factors such as housing-market costs and immigration rates shape nonearnings income flows more powerfully in certain regions than in others. The results have important policy implications. With the baby boomers on the cusp of retirement, an understanding of the geographies of nonearnings income will be important for future regional economic planning and forecasting, as these income sources will become increasingly large components of total personal income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the analysis to date on the topic of excess commuting and jobs - housing balance deals with total commuting flow, undifferentiated with respect to worker and job characteristics. In this paper we explicitly address the disaggregation issue in terms of job and worker heterogeneity and show how to incorporate such details into the analysis of excess commuting. The objectives of this paper are (I) to develop a trip-distribution model disaggregating journey-to-work data according to type of occupation in order to estimate actual commutes; (2) to develop a disaggregated version of a linear program to measure theoretical minimum and maximum commutes; and, (3) to verify variations in excess commuting and jobs-housing balance according to type of occupation. Results of actual trip-length distributions for each occupation vary from 3.72 to 5 miles for Boise, Idaho, and from 4.27 to 7.78 miles for Wichita, Kansas. Minimum commutes vary from 0.95 to 3.58 miles and from 1.5 to 3.79 miles for Boise and Wichita, respectively. These results imply nonuniform levels of excess commuting and jobs/workers ratios. The proposed models are expected to have a wide range of uses in measurement and assessment of empirical patterns of commuting. The scope of the disaggregation can be extended to other targets, such as different types of industry, household structure, income level, ethnic background, education level, transportation mode, and gender. Further dimensions of disaggregation can address spatial interactions of different socioeconomic groups in urban areas, and, more generally, contribute to exploring urban sprawl according to job characteristics and industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between job loss and workfare has been well documented. Workers who lose jobs, including long-term careers in previously secure employment, enter systems of workfare that churn them through precarious jobs in return for meagre income support. But the relationship between workfare and alternative systems of labour market assistance rolled out before job loss is less understood. To shed new light on this issue, this article critically analyses an attempt to synthesise two labour market policies implemented in response to the closure of Australia's automotive manufacturing industry in 2017. The first policy was an altruistic, spatially Keynesian response to deindustrialisation; the second policy was based on Australia's notoriously punitive system of workfare. The article asks: how was it possible to synthesise systems framed in mutually incompatible terms? This question can be addressed, it argues, by deploying an Agency-Structure-Institutions-Discourse (ASID) approach to understand how and why these labour market policies were hybridised. The article's results are instructive in a 'post-pandemic' environment in which opportunities to rollout alternatives to workfare will be forced to contend with resurgent workfare states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power couples, defined as pairs of highly educated partners, tend to cluster in cities to take advantage of more developed labor markets, better jobs, and higher wages. This research examines to what extent being a partner in a power couple brings additional wage income benefits. We examine what the effects of power couple partnering is on wage income. Furthermore, we examine how the results are affected by gender and place of residence. To determine this, the research uses detailed Swedish micro data on power couples 23–39 years of age over the period 2007–2016. Our analysis finds positive and significant results from being in a power couple on wage income after controlling for individual, workplace, and geographical characteristics. This is the case for both men and women in power couple households without children, but for women only when children are present. For power couples in denser urban areas, we find a positive effect for men in power couples with or without children. We suggest this effect is due to a more equal "balance of power" between partners in highly educated power couples located in bigger cities, where norms and values may favor a relatively greater sharing of household duties between men and women, and where men face a different competitive situation in the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial dimension of the journey-to-work has important implications for land use and development policymaking and has been widely studied. One thrust of this research is concerned with the disaggregation of workers into subgroups for understanding disparities in commute. Most of these studies, however, were limited to the disaggregation by single socioeconomic class. Hence, this research aims to examine commuting disparities across commuter subgroups stratified by two socioeconomic variables—income and race—using a visual analytics approach. By applying the doubly constrained spatial interaction model to the 2014 Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics data, this research first synthesizes commuting flows for Downtown Houston workers across income-race subgroups at the tract level in Harris County, Texas, USA. It then uses bivariate choropleth mapping to visualize the spatial distributions of major Downtown Houston commuter neighborhoods by income-race classes, and significant commuting disparities are identified across income-race subgroups. The results highlight the importance of considering income and race simultaneously for commuting research. The visualization could help policymakers clearly identify the unequal commute across worker subgroups and inform policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I extend regional multiplier analysis by incorporating both spatial (neighbor) and geographical (place-contained) effects. Multipliers, taken as elasticities, are estimated by regression analyses of the associations between retail trade earnings by place of work and total income by place of residence (from earnings, property, and transfers) across New England's counties in 2002. The multiplier analyses are conducted in two basic forms, both estimated using a simultaneous autoregressive specification and both incorporating a spatial neighbor income variable. In one, geographical effects are treated as dummy variables alone, so their impact on a particular income multiplier coefficient is read only indirectly. In the other, geographical effects are allowed to interact with property and transfer income so that their multiplier coefficients in the region vary from county to county depending upon particular geographical characteristics. The spatial effect of neighboring county income is consistent across the two forms, and suggests a competitive effect in the region's retail sector. Further results indicate that the region's property income and transfer receipts tend to offset each other in geographical context in their impact on retail-trade income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of gated communities of the upper-income and middle-income classes can be directly traced to the failure of governments to close the growing divide between rich and poor and to solve the accompanying wave of crime and fear of violence. It is also a result of an abandonment of faith in governments' capacities to deliver and maintain infrastructure and civic services. State failure has influenced people's decisions to encircle their living space, defend it, and to service their needs autonomously like citizens of the ancient walled cities. The trend toward social exclusion and spatial segregation is characteristic of these modern ministates, which poses planning, policy, and administrative questions for decisionmakers. In this paper I first set out to understand the emergence of gated communities as a global phenomenon, but particularly in the Latin American and Caribbean context. Secondly, I seek to examine the retreat of the upper and middle classes to gated communities in the poststructural adjustment years, using Trinidad as a case study. Finally, I put forward conclusions and policy prescriptions of relevance to cities in addressing the emerging issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an extended interregional social accounting matrix (SAM) framework, derived from a Danish interregional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, as the basis for a decomposition of regional income growth in Denmark in the period 1980-98. The decomposition analysis indicates that there is some evidence for a reversal in the trend of location of economic activity in Denmark in the 1990s and provides evidence on the causes of this trend reversal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many advanced economies have an aging population that relies heavily on government pensions, social security, and privately held investment-based income. In the United States the geography of social security and investment income (collectively called nonearnings income) is uneven. Furthermore, the ways in which migration serves to redistribute such income across space remain unstudied. This paper highlights regions in the United States that are becoming increasingly attractive to nonearnings income through migration. Overall, there is a consistent Rustbelt-to-Sunbelt shift in nonearnings income due to migration. These income shifts, however, are quite distinct between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. Starting in the late 1980s, nonmetropolitan portions of the Rustbelt enjoyed net gains in nonearnings income through migration processes. Therefore, it appears that the migration systems which drew income away from the nonmetropolitan north during the 1970s are now shifting to some degree. Analysis further indicates that migration contributes to greater levels of economic disparity across space. Whereas flows of social security income are highly influenced by the aggregate level of migration, flows of investment income are more influenced by differentials in migrants' per capita income levels. Regions such as the Plains are attracting migrants with relatively low per capita nonearnings income whereas the Rocky Mountain and New England regions are attracting individuals with high per capita income. Destinations such as the Rocky Mountains and New England are likely to enjoy significant economic benefits as new sources of income arrive which are tied to migration, but the Plains region is left with less-well-off populations, which pose significant social and economic problems in such sending regions. As the population in the United States and other advanced economies ages, these processes of nonearnings income migration become increasingly important in shaping local and regional economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we attempt to assess the changes in the Turkish production structure, and labor income in particular, between the 1970s and the 1990s. During this period a shift has taken place from an inward-looking policy towards an outward-oriented one. For our analysis we use two partially closed (or extended) input-output models. The demand-driven model is traditional for this type of analysis and examines the effects of a demand puli (for example, an increase in exports). For an open economy, however, it is not only important to investigate the effects of a demand pull, but also to examine how a cost push (for example, an increase in import prices) affects total gross output, value added, or labor income, for example. To study the effects of a cost push we introduce the partially closed supply-driven input-output model. Instead of analyzing the effects of a specific exogenous demand pull or cost push, we focus on various types of multiplier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to evaluate the level and examine the dynamics of housing consumption and residential crowding in urban China almost a decade after the housing reform was launched. I argue that housing consumption and residential crowding are affected not only by demographic and socioeconomic factors, as they are in market economies, but also by institutional factors that are unique to China because of the dualism in housing reform. Using a 1996 national survey, I find that the level of housing consumption is still low and residential crowding is common. A room of one's own continues to be a dream for most Chinese. However, Chinese households now have more control over their housing, and their housing behaviors are beginning to share similarities with the West. For example, life cycle, household income, housing tenure, and city size have similar effects on housing consumption and residential crowding as they do in Western housing markets. It is still clear, however, that the socialist institution—the hukou system—continues to influence housing consumption, although to a lesser extent than in the prereform period. Households with rural or temporary hukou are at a disadvantage in the housing market, in the sense that they occupy less spacious housing and suffer more from residential crowding than do those with urban and permanent hukou. Yet, these last are more constrained by institutional variables such as job and work-unit characteristics, which affect housing consumption differently across cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explains why the debate over the 2001 Census of Population debate in Great Britain should be centered around the need for a question on income. Proposal to include the income question on the White Paper to be written into the census act of parliament; Measurement of the level of income inequality; Socioeconomic inequalities as underlying causes of most social structures and patterns.

Recent research examined the relationship between certain indicators of environmental quality and income, concluding on the basis of econometric estimation that, in some cases, an inverted‐U relationship, which has been called an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), exists between the variables. There is speculation on the implications of this pattern for economic and environmental policy. This paper examines this research as a whole and finds that unequivocal evidence for an EKC relationship is scant; that there are important indicators that show a monotonically increasing relationship; that even where there may be an EKC relationship, most of the population is still on the increasing section of the curve, so that income growth on the basis of this relationship would result in considerable further environmental damage; and that a review of overall environmental quality, even in the richest countries, shows that it is still declining. It is concluded that, from the point of view of environmental sustainability, the income‐environment relationship is still problematic, and determined environmental policy will be required if future income growth is to be compatible with sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate if there are positive economic effects for individuals residing in ethnic neighborhoods, in particular if the likelihood of labor market participation among foreign-born is affected by residentially aggregating with other people from one's same native region. We also examine to what extent the income level among foreign-born who have a job is affected by the extent to which they congregate in ethnic enclaves. We use Swedish micro-level data for the time period 2007 to 2015 and run a Heckman estimation for four distinct immigration groups: those from (a) the Middle East; poor and middle-income countries in (b) Africa and (c) Asia; and (d) and those from the former Yugoslavia. We control for personal and neighborhood characteristics as well as workplace characteristics. The results suggest that, in some cases, there may be positive effects from ethnic concentration, but even more from living with first- and second-generation immigrants in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a general belief that expanding labour-market regions, triggered by increased commuting, have positive economic effects on individuals, firms, and society. Recently, however, scholars have reported possible negative outcomes related to health and well-being. Based on these findings, this study addresses the association between longdistance commuting, and mortality. Using longitudinal individual data from between 1985 and 2008, focusing on 55-year-olds in 1994, we model mortality through propensity score matching and Kaplan-Meyer estimates of survival among long-distance commuters and matched controls from the population travelling short distances to work. The results indicate that women who have experienced long-distance commuting face a significantly higher mortality risk compared with women with short commutes to work. This seems to be driven by variations in income and education: for example, for women with longdistance commuting experience, substantially lower survival rates are found among those with low education and low income. A very different picture emerges for men, for whom mortality risks do not seem to be associated with long-distance commuting. Our findings suggest that men and women are subject to different mechanisms regarding the nexus between commuting and mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct a multivariate analysis of the potential impact of higher gas prices on urban sprawl in the twelve largest Canadian Metropolitan Areas for the period 1986-2006. Controlling for variables such as income and population, we show that higher gasoline prices have significantly reduced urban sprawl. On average, a 1% increase in gas prices has caused a 0.32% increase in the population living in the inner city and a 0.60% decrease in low-density housing units. Our results also show that higher incomes have played a significant role in increasing urban sprawl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]