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The primary aim of this study is to provide evidence regarding the impact of social protection benefits, taxes and social security contributions in reducing income inequalities. The study employs a well-established methodology to estimate the partial redistributive effect of contributory and non-contributory pensions, family benefits, unemployment benefits, sickness and employment injury benefits, disability benefits, social security contributions, as well as income and property taxes. The partial redistributive effect corresponds to the percentage decrease in the Gini coefficient that is attributable to each social protection benefit and tax. The main data input is microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The evidence presented shows that social protection benefits, and its financing through taxes and social security contributions, are effective policy measures for reducing income inequalities. On average countries that spend more on social protection are those that experience larger reductions in income inequality. The paper concludes with practical recommendations on how to finance and design social protection systems that reduce inequalities, as well as ideas for future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality in India has declined with the Gini coefficient, a statistical tool to measure inequity, showing improvement in urban as well as rural areas [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basel II regulations, which are also incorporated in the Basel III regulatory framework, introduced standards and guidelines for banking risk management. Credit institutions are now free to select one approach, out of the three defined, for the assessment of their risk exposure, focusing on credit risk. If a credit institution has sufficient financial resources, human resources and know-how, it will not rely on the Standardised Approach, which includes regulatory prescribed risk factor measures, but on the Internal Ratings Based Approach (IRB), which requires the institution to meet a number of criteria and prove to the regulatory authority that the internal assessments are adequate and applied in daily operations. The key risk factor under the IRB approach is the probability of default (PD), which is assessed by PD predictive models. The Croatian National Bank has developed a PD model, used for assessment of risk in the non-financial corporations sector, both on the system level and on the level of individual credit institutions, in conditions of high risk concentrations and in stress testing. This research shows the process in which the PD model was developed and proves that such a model has greater discriminatory and predictive power with behavioural variables than without them. A special emphasis was put on the methodological approach, with its key aspects aligned with Basel II and Basel III regulations, which made significant improvements in the target characteristics of the model: its predictability and discriminatory power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chotikapanich and Griffiths (2002) introduced the Dirichlet distribution to the estimation of Lorenz curves. This distribution naturally accommodates the proportional nature of income share data and the dependence structure between the shares. Chotikapanich and Griffiths (2002) fit a family of five Lorenz curves to one year of Swedish and Brazilian income share data using unconstrained maximum likelihood and unconstrained non-linear least squares. We attempt to replicate the authors' results and extend their analyses using both constrained estimation techniques and five additional years of data. We successfully replicate a majority of the authors' results and find that some of their main qualitative conclusions also hold using our constrained estimators and additional data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The largest decrease in income inequality among EU member states in the recent recession was registered in Romania, a 4.5 point drop in the Gini coefficient between 2007 and 2010. The country experienced a severe economic downturn and some of the toughest austerity measures among EU member states. I explain the drop in inequality by analysing the gap between wage earners and individuals who are self-employed or contributing family workers. Austerity cuts compressed top wages in the public sector, while some categories of low income earners saw modest increases in welfare payments. The drop in inequality thus reflects the austerity cuts at the top of the income distribution and only modest gains for low income households. Using 2011 Romanian Household Budget Survey data, I show the impact of social insurance and social protection transfers on the Gini coefficient. Using the same dataset, I run a simulation of how a set of redistributive policies would achieve a further reduction in income inequality, to levels below the EU27 average. Throughout the analysis, I highlight methodological difficulties in measuring income inequality in Romania. In particular, I show how the widespread imputation of own production of agricultural products in Romanian household income surveys significantly decreases income inequality indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the role an illiquid durable consumption good plays in determining the level of precautionary savings and the distribution of wealth in a standard Aiyagari model (i.e. a model with heterogeneous agents, idiosyncratic uncertainty, and borrowing constraints). Transactions costs induce an inaction region over which the durable stock and the associated user cost are not adjusted in response to changes in income, increasing, on average, the volatility of non-durable consumption. The volatility of total consumption is then a function of the share of the durable good in the utility function and the width of the inaction region. We are particularly interested in parameterizations which increase the precautionary motive for saving through an increase in ‘committed expenditure risk’. We find, for an empirically relevant share of durable consumption and for all transaction costs below an upper threshold, that the level of precautionary savings is increasing in the transaction costs. Transaction costs have only a modest impact on the degree of wealth dispersion, as measured by the Gini index, as the associated increase in savings is close to linear in wealth. While we are unable to match the dispersion of wealth in the data, we increase the dispersion over a single asset model (Gini index of .71 for financial assets and .37 for total wealth) and we are able to match the relative dispersion of financial to durable assets, i.e. we find financial assets much more unequal than durable assets. We also match the ratio of housing wealth to total wealth for the median agent. We calibrate the model to data from the PSID, the CES, and the SCF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on the different factors affecting the economy of Brazil. Unemployment rate; Increase in the Gini coefficient; Limits on personnel expenditure by states; Stock of net foreign debt.

The article talks about measures describing the distribution of income in the U.S. as of 2012. It is noted that various measures of the distribution of income are being published by the Census Bureau every year. It offers information on indicators of the degree of inequality in the income distribution, including the Gini coefficient. It also mentions disadvantages to using Current Population Survey (CPS) as a source of income data when estimating the extent of inequality.

While the extent of income inequality is debated periodically, one rarely discussed aspect of inequality is its impact on the tax system. Given the nature of the U.S. federal tax system, changes in the distribution of income can have significant implications for who pays the taxes, how much they pay, and federal tax revenues. One common measure to characterize inequality or the dispersion of income is the Gini coefficient, which varies from 0 to 1. A Gini coefficient of 0 indicates that income is evenly distributed among the population (that is, everyone has the same income) while a value of 1 indicates perfect income inequality (that is, one individual has all the income). Between 1980 and 2004, the Gini coefficient for household income increased from 0.403 to 0.466 -- a 15.6% increase. The Gini coefficient for earnings increased by 22.4% from 0.331 in 1980 to 0.405 by 2004. Inequality has, therefore, increased over the past 25 years. The two major sources of federal tax revenues are the individual income tax and the Social Security payroll tax, accounting for almost 80% of total federal tax revenue. These two taxes have different tax bases, tax rates, and adjustments to income. Furthermore, the individual income tax system consists of the regular income tax and the parallel alternative minimum tax (AMT), which have different tax bases and tax rates. Consequently, changes in income and earnings inequality could have very different effects on different parts of the federal tax system. Many of the parameters of the regular income tax are indexed to inflation. Nevertheless, with income growing faster than prices and with rising income inequality, more income falls into higher tax brackets. Individual income tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, however, do not appear to be associated with rising inequality because the income tax has become less progressive through legislative changes as inequality has increased. The parameters of the AMT, however, are not indexed at all. Consequently, the amount of income and the number of taxpayers subject to the AMT will increase dramatically over time because of income growth and rising income inequality in the absence of legislative changes. The actual increase in AMT taxpayers has been limited because of a series of enacted temporary "patches." Although the maximum taxable limit of the payroll tax is indexed for average earnings growth, rising earnings inequality has pushed more and more of covered earnings above the limit. Thus, the proportion of covered earnings that is taxable has fallen over the past 25 years. This report will not be updated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the social structure in Venezuela. It states that the country's large portion of the population belongs to the work force which consists of young people. The article also offers information on the country's strong social security system that consists of a government social security system and the Gini Index which reached to 0.49 percent in 2007.

The article offers political and economic outlook for Hong Kong. Politically, Chinese President Hu Jintao was faced with ten of thousands of pro-democracy marchers during his visit to the country last July 1, 2007. Economically, the country's wealth gap has increased for the past 10 years under Chinese rules considering the result of the gini coefficient which measures the level of income disparity. Its stocks, in the contrary, have been bolstered by mainland Chinese banks.