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The uneven distribution of welfare not only hinders social fairness but also affects the optimal allocation of resources for rural residential land. Recourse to traditional welfare theory or Amartya Sen's function and ability welfare theory is inappropriate in this situation as neither is focused on the influence of welfare differences. Therefore, this study aims to provide a new focus for welfare economics in integrating the concept of the internal group welfare gap into overall welfare evaluation. Fuzzy mathematics is applied to calculate welfare and the concept of the Gini coefficient is used to evaluate the welfare gap. The resulting model is applied to the cities of Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Wuxi before and after rural residential land circulation (RRLC) to determine their resulting changes in welfare and welfare gap. From this, it is found that, after RRLC, the farmers' overall welfare increased by 17.5%, 15.1%, and 23.5% respectively, while the welfare gap of Guangzhou and Wuxi was improved, and Chongqing was decreased. This means the welfare gap widened in Guangzhou and Wuxi, while narrowed in Chongqing. Concluding remarks call for increased government attention to the fair distribution of welfare between different groups of farmers by increased social security and a more detailed consideration of the groups involved.

We construct unanticipated government spending shocks for 103 developing countries from 1990 to 2015 and study their effects on income distribution. We find that unanticipated fiscal consolidations lead to a long-lasting increase in income inequality, while fiscal expansions lower inequality. The results are robust to several measures of income distribution and size of the fiscal shocks, to an alternative identification strategy, across expansions and recessions and across country groups (low-income countries versus emerging markets). An additional contribution of the paper is the computation of the medium-term inequality multiplier. This is on average about 1 in our sample, meaning that a cumulative decrease in government spending of 1 percent of GDP over 5 years is associated with a cumulative increase in the Gini coefficient over the same period of about 1 percentage point. The multiplier is larger for total government expenditure than for public investment and consumption (with the former having larger effect), likely due to the redistributive role of transfers. Finally, we find that (unanticipated) fiscal consolidations lead to an increase in poverty.

Esports is often described as a growing industry ripe with financial opportunities for young professional, competitive gamers. However, these claims rarely consider how income is distributed amongst players. This study uses prize earnings data from 2005 to 2019 to examine labor market inequality and related social inequalities and social stratifications. Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients show that inequality has increased in the labor market overall and the labor markets for the five top games based on total prizes awarded ( Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, League of Legends, StarCraft II). Competitors can expect to earn more today than in 2005, but median incomes have shown sporadic and inconsistent growth compared with top incomes. Moreover, most competitors earn less than the US poverty threshold. Comparing the earnings of the top female players to the whole labor market shows that gender inequalities exist in median incomes and the likelihood of earning more than the poverty threshold. The esports labor market is an engine of inequality that provides opportunities for a few (primarily male) competitors while building a growing class of lowly paid players who support the interests of game designers and event organizers.

Tax and social expenditure policies have a crucial role in income distribution. This study explores the potential role of taxation and social expenditure policies in income redistribution in South Asia. For this purpose, empirical analysis is conducted by Fixed Effect (FE) and Instrumental Variable (IV) FE models. The analysis suggests that both taxation and social expenditures policies effectively reduce income inequality in South Asia. These findings indicate that social spending and taxation can be used as a policy tool to redistribute income in developing countries. The results also indicate that higher social spending, increased direct taxes, and more reliance on foreign debts can ameliorate the income distribution. Based on the results, it can be suggested that for this region, with the low level of taxes, direct taxes, a large informal economy, and other weak features of tax administration, more reliance on direct taxes and social expenditure policies should be the primary tool for income redistribution.JEL Classification: H2, H5, I3How to Cite:Khan, S., & Padda, I. U. H. (2021). The Impact of Tax and Social Expenditure Policies on Income Distribution: Evidence from South Asia. Etikonomi, 20(2), xx – xx. https://doi.org/10.15408/etk.v20i2.18121.

Background Biomedical research plays an important role in improving health. There seems to exist a negative correlation between the amount of biomedical research funding and disease burden from all Sub-Saharan African countries. In this study, we describe funding patterns for biomedical research, explore the correlation between funding and burden of diseases, and quantify inequalities in funds distribution across diseases in Gabon over the period 2005–2015. Methods Data on medical research funds from 2005 to 2015 were retrieved through a structured questionnaire distributed to Gabonese biomedical research institutions and by consulting online databases. Data on the burden of diseases were gathered from the World Health Organization and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. We used Kendall rank correlation coefficient to explore the correlation between cumulative funds over time and the burden of disease. The inequality distribution of funding across diseases was assessed through Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve. Results Biomedical research funding was characterized by a remarkable growth from 2005 to 2010 and a decline from 2010 to 2014. Funds were mostly from external sources and from partnerships. There was inequality in research funds allocation across diseases and malaria was far the most funded disease. There was a significant negative correlation between cumulative funding and the burden of HIV, tuberculosis, and of Helminthiasis (from 2006 to 2010) suggesting that research may be contributing to the management of such diseases. A positive, although not significant, correlation was found between cumulative funds and malaria burden. Conclusions The negative correlation between HIV and tuberculosis cumulative funding and burden suggests that research may be contributing to the management of such diseases but further research is needed to assess the causal direction of such as relationship. As the burden of non-communicable diseases is increasing, more research funds should be focused on those. While research partnerships have been and will remain fundamental, Gabon should increase the amount of national funds to overcome periods of reduced research funding flows from abroad.

By combining household survey data before and during the COVID-19 pandemic with detailed tax-benefit simulations, this paper quantifies the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax-benefit policies in mitigating the immediate impact of the economic shocks. Our results show a dramatic increase in income poverty and inequality between December 2019 and June 2020, the period when the economy was hit the hardest. The national poverty headcount increases from 25.7 to 58.2%, the extreme poverty headcount from 9.2 to 38.6%, and the Gini coefficient from 0.461 to 0.592. On average, household disposable income drops by 41%. The new Family Protection Grant provides income protection for the poorest income decile. However, overall tax-benefit policies do little to mitigate the losses in household incomes due to the pandemic. Informal workers, in particular, are left unprotected due to the lack of income support in the event of unemployment.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41287-021-00490-1.En combinant les données d'enquêtes auprès des ménages avant et pendant la pandémie de COVID-19 avec des simulations détaillées d’impôts et de prestations, cet article quantifie les effets distributifs de la COVID-19 en Équateur et le rôle que jouent les politiques d’impôts et des prestations pour atténuer l'impact immédiat des chocs économiques. Nos résultats montrent une hausse spectaculaire de la pauvreté monétaire et des inégalités entre décembre 2019 et juin 2020, période durant laquelle l'économie a été le plus durement touchée. Le taux national de pauvreté passe de 25,7% à 58,2%, le taux d'extrême pauvreté de 9,2% à 38,6% et le coefficient de Gini de 0,461 à 0,592. En moyenne, le revenu disponible des ménages baisse de 41%. La nouvelle allocation de protection familiale offre une assurance de protection des revenus aux 10% des ménages les plus pauvres. Cependant, de façon générale, les politiques d’impôts et des prestations en font peu pour atténuer les pertes de revenus des ménages en raison de la pandémie. Les travailleurs et travailleuses informel·le·s, en particulier, sont laissé·e·s sans protection en raison de l'absence d’allocation de revenu en cas de chômage.

Replacement rates have gained acceptance as a useful metric for assessing the conditions of retirees and households at point of retirement. Here we use data from the SHARE longitudinal database to investigate income dynamics within a comparative European context. Our analysis, centering on households as opposed to the individuals on whom international data commonly focus, reduces replacement rates to their components—pension, work income, etc.—and looks at the dynamics among household members in relation to work and pension income. Total replacement rates vary widely among the fourteen countries sampled: overall replacement rates are around the Bismarckian 70% across the entire sample, 80% in countries that have Social Democratic and Continental social-policy regimes, and 60% in countries that have East European and Middle Eastern regimes. Looking at the pension and wage components, however, the latter accounts for about 30% of household income—an important fact for decision-makers to consider. Couples tend to retire together, especially if close in age, and work income compensates amply for lower pension income. The Gini coefficients of our sample are compared before/after retirement to determine whether the social programs that underlie pensions mitigate income inequality after retirement. Finally, we examine the well-being and quality of life of retirees and their households. We find a positive correlation between replacement rate and indicators of retirees’ and their households’ quality of life, e.g., satisfaction with life, ability to consume healthcare services, and ability to cover unforeseen expenses.

Purpose of the study. The study of uneven regional development is necessary to describe the dynamics of changes in the conditions of economic activity in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, to compare them, and in particular to identify problems associated with inequality in providing the territories with infrastructure for training specialists with higher education. The system of higher education is considered in the article as one of the institutions, the state of which characterizes the socio-economic development of the region, provides human resources to the economy of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation. The purpose of this study is to develop methodological approaches to the study of the processes of divergence / convergence of regions in the field of higher education. Materials and methods. This paper provides a review of works devoted to research in the field of assessing the dynamics of differentiation of the subjects of the Russian Federation by various indicators. Methods of statistical data analysis were applied: variance, variation coefficients, Gini coefficients, Theil indices were calculated for statistical data on the number of university students in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in different time periods. Graphs reflecting the dynamics of changes in the Gini coefficient, Theil index were built. Microsoft Excel was used to process statistical indicators. Results. This article describes methodological approaches to the analysis of statistical data characterizing trends in the development of the higher education system in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and presents the results of a study of changes that have occurred in the period from 1995 to 2019 in the Russian Federation in the spatial concentration of the number of university students. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the developed methodological approaches to the study of the processes of divergence / convergence of regions and obtaining new data on the inequality of the spatial concentration of higher education in the Russian Federation. As a result of the statistical analysis, we obtained data on the presence of three periods with different dynamics of changes in the number of university students in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation: from 1995 to 2005, the inequality between the regions in this indicator decreased; from 2006 to 2012 - stabilized, slightly changing; from 2013 to 2019, there has been an increase in regional inequality in terms of the indicator under study.It was revealed that the predominance of the processes of divergence or convergence of regions according to the parameter «the number of students of educational institutions of higher education per 10,000 population in the subject of the Russian Federation» is observed in the same periods. Analysis of interregional variance for this parameter in different time periods showed the dependence of the variance value on the average value of indicators of all regions. Conclusion. The described methodological approaches to the study of the processes of divergence / convergence of regions in the field of higher education can be used to assess a large amount of statistical data, diagnose regional inequality in this area, and can be used as the basis for substantiating managerial decision-making at the level of public administration in education.

Background Oral health is a major public health issue which affects the human life. Access to dental care is one of the important factors in maintaining oral health. This study was aimed to investigate inequality in dental care expenditure in Iranian households. Methods The present study is a secondary analysis of a national cross-sectional survey. The data collected from the Households Income and Expenditure Survey in 2016 and 2017. The final sample consisted of 54,354 households living in rural and urban regions of all the provinces. Inequalities in household’s dental care expenditure per capita in respect to income quintiles and educational level were measured based on the Gini coefficient and concentration index. Results The results showed that about 8% of households had paid for dental care during the month before sampling. The Gini coefficient value was estimated to be 0.97 and 0.96 for dental care expenditure per capita respectively in absolute and relative measure. It indicated a significant inequality in the dental expenditure among the sample households. The values of concentration index were positive and significant for all dental care subcategories in respect to the provincial and national income quintiles as well as the educational level of the head of the household. Conclusions Income and educational inequality in the both absolute and relative dental services expenditure of the Iranian households were in favor of higher income groups as well as higher educational level of household heads. Income inequality was higher in total dental care expenditure per capita and all its subcategories than the educational inequalities of dental expenditure. In order to reduce these inequalities, the policymakers need to pay special attention to low-income households, particularly those with low-educated heads.

The Gini coefficient features prominently in Amartya Sen’s 1973 and 1997 seminal work on income inequality and social welfare. We construct the Gini coefficient from social‐psychological building blocks, reformulating it as a ratio between a measure of social stress and aggregate income. We determine when as a consequence of an income gain by an individual, an increase in the social stress measure dominates a concurrent increase in the aggregate income, such that the magnitude of the Gini coefficient increases. By integrating our approach to the construction of the Gini coefficient with Sen’s social welfare function, we are able to endow the function with a social‐psychological underpinning, showing that this function, too, is a composite of a measure of social stress and aggregate income. We reveal a dual role played by aggregate income as a booster of social welfare in Sen’s social welfare function. Quite surprisingly, we find that a marginal increase of income for any individual, regardless of the position of the individual in the hierarchy of incomes, improves welfare as measured by Sen’s social welfare function.

This article contributes to sustainable development literature by extending the investigation on diversified public and private institutional elements and the link between them and a broader spectrum of inclusive and sustainable features. The study utilizes the World Economic Forum's data of related variables for 30 developed countries. The countries are competitively ranked based on the quality of each of the above institutional and development elements. Then, nonparametric Spearman's rank correlation tests are performed for the pairs of each institutional and respective development constituent. The assumption behind the tests is that a country with better qualities of institutional factors is also in a position with higher levels of inclusive and sustainable development. Significant positive associations are found for most of the institutional factors, and employment and eco-adjusted savings elements while significant negative relationships are found for most of the institutional factors and poverty, Gini coefficient (inequality), and carbon intensity elements.

Tourism’s relationship with income inequality is a hot spot in the academic community; however, few studies focus on how tourism shapes rural income inequality, despite its significant role in rural poverty alleviation. This article investigates the nonlinear effects of tourism on urban–rural income inequality and rural income inequality based on data from China’s provincial regions over the period 1995–2018, using the dynamic panel data approach. This study further examines the regional heterogeneity of such effects. The results demonstrate that for the national sample, there exists a significant cubic curve relationship between domestic tourism and rural income inequality. However, inbound tourism’s relationship with rural income inequality is not significant. Besides, there exists an N-shaped Kuznets curve between domestic or inbound tourism and urban–rural income inequality. The effects of tourism on rural income inequality and urban–rural income inequality vary significantly across the eastern, middle, and western regions. From east to middle to west, the significance of inbound tourism’s influence on income inequality decreases gradually. This study also highlights some critical theoretical and practical implications. Unlike prior studies, this article builds the first comprehensive research framework consisting of tourism, rural income inequality, and urban–rural income inequality.

In this study, the distribution of 12 main expenditure categories included in the consumer price index (CPI) among NUTS-2 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics-2) regions is examined. The study covers the years 2007-2018. In the study, interregional consumption expenditure rates are identified with the Gini coefficient, which is a measure of inequality and the obtained consumption expenditure rates through the years are interpreted. The coefficients calculated for each expenditure category are important in terms of revealing the course of consumption behavior of households in Turkey over the years and reflecting the best and worst distribution at the NUTS-2 level. Findings regarding the expenditure categories show that the consumption behavior in Turkey in the relevant period is far from equal at the regional level. According to the findings, the expenditure category with the highest inequality at the NUTS-2 level is the food and non-alcoholic beverages category with an average Gini coefficient of 0.3031. The expenditure category with the highest equal distribution, on the other hand, is the education category with a Gini coefficient of 0.2307 according to the findings.

Over the past four decades, the Egyptian economy has suffered from both income inequality and environmental degradation. This dual problem raises the question about the nature of the relationship between inequality and the environment in a developing country like Egypt. In this regard, the study aims to examine the impact of income inequality on carbon emissions during the period 1975–2017. The analysis considers the ability of the political economy approach compared to the Keynesian trade-off approach to explain the inequality-environment relationship in Egypt. To do this, the novel dynamic autoregressive distributed lags approach is employed to capture the short-run and long-run relationships and to overcome the complications associated with the structure of the widely used autoregressive distributive lags model. The findings show that the relationship between inequality and CO2 emissions is not a trade-off. Rather, inequality leads to environmental deterioration in the long run, but there is no significant effect in the short run. In the long run, a 1% rise in the Gini coefficient increases CO2 emissions by 2.28%. These results support the political economy approach in explaining the inequality-environment nexus. Hence, the economic development policies adopted in Egypt during the past four decades have led to a negative impact on the environment. The study advises economic policy makers in Egypt to adopt income redistribution policies to reduce the severity of income inequality. Improving income distribution has a positive effect on the environment in Egypt.

Purpose: This paper aims to assess the structure of financing and the directions of spending resources on social activities carried out by faith-based organizations with the status of public benefit organizations in Poland. Design/Methodology/Approach: The analysis of literature sources was used in the theoretical part of the paper, whereas in the research part of the paper, basic techniques of descriptive statistics were applied, such as tabular description, graphical presentation of results, selected measures of distribution in the form of arithmetic mean and median, as well as a measure of concentration - Gini coefficient. Findings: The article shows that the primary source of financing the activities of faith-based organizations having the status of public benefit organizations in Poland are public funds, most often coming from the budgets of local government units. At the same time, the largest share in the revenues of the surveyed organizations has a group of entities with the most significant financial potential. The main direction of spending by these organizations is the free of charge activities carried out mainly for the benefit of children and youth burdened with poverty, the disabled, and care activities for the elderly. Practical Implications: The study is a starting point for evaluating the effectiveness of raising and spending funds for social purposes by a selected group of public benefit organizations in Poland that combine religious and social missions. The presentation of the activity of these entities in the financial aspect is part of the research on the development of civil society. Originality/Value: In Poland, there is no research on the structure of financing and the directions of spending money by faith-based organizations with the status of public benefit organizations. The results of this research allow us to assess the activity of faith-based organizations with the status of public benefit organizations in the direction of raising and spending public and private funds.

PURPOSE: The study aims to analyze the relationship between the pace of economic development expressed by the GDP index and the level of income inequalities measured by the Gini coefficient., DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The research hypothesis assumes that the level of income inequalities influences GDP growth. I hypothesize that this relationship is negative – a lower level of income inequalities favor the economic growth. I use the GDP per capita (per adult) year-to-year index to measure the pace of economic development. GDP index is a dependent variable in all estimated models. The explanatory variables are, GINI index, net national saving, public goods spending, country's dummy variables, year dummy variables., FINDINGS: Using data from 43 countries covering the years 1990-2017, I prove that (1) higher income inequality is related to higher economic growth (but only on the level of the sample); (2) a level of savings affects the economic growth positively; (3) a higher level of spending on public goods affects GDP positively (on the level of the whole sample and in the group of more improve rished countries)., PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The analysis confirms the positive relationship between income inequalities and the pace of economic development, but only at the whole sample level. Higher public spending positively affects economic growth. Savings accumulated by the citizens significantly affect economic growth, as a higher level of savings creates greater investment opportunities., ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Inequalities are an inherent part of society and the economy. It is often presumed that if the level of income inequality is too high, it negatively affects the economy by lowering the development pace. Although the previous findings are somewhat mixed, I pose the research hypothesis assuming a low level of income inequality is linked to higher GDP growth., The project is financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland under the programme "Regional Initiative of Excellence" 2019 - 2022 project number 015/RID/2018/19 total funding amount 10 721 040,00 PLN., peer-reviewed

The New Development Bank (NDB) and the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) were built by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the BRICS countries) in response to the ‘disappointing’ Bretton Woods Institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The main difference between the Bretton Woods Institutions and the BRICS institutions is that the latter adopts an equal‐weight system instead of a weighted voting system in the NDB (all five BRICS countries have equal shares and voting weights regardless of the major differences in their economic weights) and uses consensus instead of majority voting rules to make decisions regarding critical issues in the CRA. In fact, both the equal‐weight system and consensus rule are unprecedented in the history of multilateral financial institutions. The World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank and even the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) all adopt weighted voting systems and majority voting rules. We explain why the BRICS countries adopt these unprecedented designs through precise power measurements and carefully designed experiments. First, we measure the voting power of each member of the BRICS’ NDB and CRA under the current decision‐making systems, using this information as a control group. Then, we remeasure the voting power of each member of the NDB under the assumption that their shares and voting weights are allocated according to their economic weights; additionally, we remeasure the voting power of each country of the CRA under the assumption that majority rules are adopted when decisions are being made on critical issues. Moreover, we establish evaluation indices of power equality and power equity based on classic and variant Gini coefficients and Lorenz curves and use them to assess and compare the power structures of the BRICS’ NDB and CRA in the contexts of different voting weight reallocations and different voting rules redesigns. We use these indices to precisely analyse whether the power structures of the BRICS institutions become more equable or equitable in the examined contexts and to investigate the relationship between equality and equity in this setting.

Objective To examine the distributional effects of the 2008 recession and subsequent recovery across generational cohorts. Methods Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (2007–2016), we constructed a measure of economic well-being accounting for income, household size, and annuitized value of assets. We examine trajectories of adjusted income and inequality, using Gini coefficients and income shares by decile, for the overall population and by cohort during the recession and recovery. Results Inequality declined temporarily during the recession, but reached new highs during the recovery. During recovery, population-level increases in economic resources were not reflected among below-median households, as the more concentrated financial assets rose while broader-based home equity and employment fell or remained stagnant. Inequality measures increased for cohorts in their primary working years (Generation-X and Baby Boomers), but not among the younger Millennials, who were at early stages of education, workforce entry, and household formation. Discussion The study illustrates an integrative approach to analyzing cumulative dis/advantage by considering interactions between historically consistent macrolevel events, such as economic shocks or policy choices affecting all cohorts, and the persistent life-course processes that tend to increase heterogeneity and inequality as cohorts age over time. Although recovery policies led to rapid recovery of financial asset values, they did not proportionately reach those below the median or their economic resource types. Results suggest that in a high-inequality environment, recovery policies from economic shocks may need tailoring to all levels of resources in order to achieve more equitable recovery outcomes and prevent exacerbating cohort inequality trajectories.

Punctuated Equilibrium Theory posits that policy-making is generally characterized by long periods of stability that are interrupted by short periods of fundamental policy change. The literature converged on the measure of kurtosis and L-kurtosis to assess these change patterns. In this letter, we critically discuss these measures and propose the Gini coefficient as a (1) comparable, but (2) more intuitive, and (3) more precise measure of “punctuated” change patterns.

Purpose: this study measures gender segregation by occupations and wage inequality based on overall segregation, vertical segregation, and horizontal segregation in terms of labour supply, namely differences in wages, hours of work, age, level of education, and mobility (rural and urban) in South Sumatra Province in 2019.Methods: the data used in this study are secondary data sourced from the 2019 South Sumatra Province Labour Force Survey (SAK19.AK) which is limited to individuals aged 15 to 64 who are currently working, namely as many as 10,429 individuals, of whom 6,873 men and 3,556 women. Classification of the main occupations using quantitative analysis techniques, namely measuring segregation is based on the overall, vertical and horizontal dimensions based on the Gini coefficient, Somer D Statistic, and Pythagorean Theorem.Results: (1) Women are more segregated based on the main occupations, especially jobs with high social stratification and wage groups. (2) Women have more advantages in workplaces with low social stratification and higher education categories. (3) There is no wage inequality based on the main occupations, education, age, and mobility.Conclusions and Relevance: the results of the study prove that there is high segregation based on wage groups and educational composition. Women emphasize increasing education because based on vertical segregation, women with higher education level advantage more and they occupy jobs that are equal to men based on wage stratification.

Правильный выбор и корректная интерпретация методологии измерения неравенства важны для понимания особенностей и глубины экономического неравенства в России. В данной статье рассмотрены оценки для России основных показателей неравенства, используемых в международных исследованиях. В первой части статьи представлены оценки неравенства в России по официальным статистическим данным Росстата и проанализированы альтернативные оценки по расчетам международных организаций и отдельных групп ученых. Также исследуются показатели неравенства и ряд методологических аспектов измерения, которые необходимо учитывать при проведении расчетов. В рамках этого показано, как выбранные показатели и используемые данные влияют на оценку неравенства. Дана оценка неравенства россиян по накопленному богатству и описана специфика доходного неравенства российского населения, а именно наличие тяжелых хвостов распределений.Во второй части статьи на данных ОЭСР проведено сравнение неравенства по доходам населения России и других стран по различным показателям. Согласно результатам, по большинству показателей Россия относится к группе стран с умеренно высоким неравенством по доходам (выше среднего уровня ОЭСР), а с учетом дооценки доходов самого богатого верхнего дециля на основе данных по богатству и налоговой статистике она становится одним из мировых лидеров по неравенству (как по оценкам Credit Suisse, так и Т. Пикетти). Автор приходит к выводу, что для получения объективной картины неравенства необходимо его оценивание одновременно по нескольким измерениям. Помимо стандартных показателей дифференциации доходов (таких как коэффициент Джини и децильный коэффициент), важно учитывать и ряд других показателей, которые отражают специфику распределения доходов в России, в частности, наличие тяжелого хвоста. Особый интерес представляют показатели, учитывающие особенности распределения доходов россиян в концах распределений (коэффициент Пальма и др.) и чувствительные к изменению доходов среди бедных слоев населения (индекс Аткинсона, среднее логарифмическое отклонение).

The goal of article is to identify the characteristics of economic behavior of households based on the study of inequality and statistical analysis of their income and expenditure for the period of 2014–2019. The population differentiation according to the level of per capita equivalent income for 2019 was analyzed and Gini coefficient was calculated based on the methods of economic and mathematical statistics. The Lorentz concentration curve was constructed using the graphical-variational method. Based on the method of analysis and synthesis, the resources and expenditures of households in 2014–2019 were studied and conclusions were made about their economic behavior. The calculated Gini coefficient for Ukraine's economy in 2019 is 23.50% which means that there is a moderate level of inequality in the country. The analysis of household income and expenditure statis-tics provides information on low standards of living, as the main sources of household income are wages, pensions, scholarships, and social benefits; the most important item of expenditure is food expenditures. Economic behavior of households, resulting from the current standard of living, the structure of its resources and expenditures, is defined as passive and is characterized by adaptation, conformism and patience of the population to their living conditions, which hinders the active development of so-cio-economic system and the change of economic thinking. The Lorentz curve proves the low level of population differentiation in Ukraine, however, given the high proportion of the poor in the country, there is a need to improve the methodology for collecting and compiling statistical information. The scientific novelty is in the practical application of the method of calculating the Gini coef-ficient and construction of the Lorentz concentration curve on the basis of data from the State Statistics Service was developed. Based on the analysis of household income and expenditure, the type of their economic behavior was defined as passive. The practical significance is in the basis for the study of different types of economic human behavior in the system of social relations based on the analysis of socio-economic inequality was developed. Keywords: income inequality, economic behavior, welfare level, Gini coefficient, Lorentz curve. У статті виявлено особливості економічної поведінки домогосподарств на основі дослідження нерівності та статистич-ного аналізування їх доходів і витрат за період 2014–2019 років. На основі методів економіко-математичної статистики проаналізовано диференціацію населення за рівнем середньодушових еквівалентних доходів за 2019 рік, розраховано коефіцієнт Джині. За допомогою графічно-варіаційного методу побудована крива концентрації Лоренца. Розрахований коефіцієнт Джині для економіки України у 2019 році складає 23,50% та означає, що наявний помірний рівень нерівності в країні. Аналізування статистики доходів та витрат домогосподарств надає інформацію про низький рівень життя насе-лення, оскільки основними джерелами формування грошових доходів домогосподарств є оплата праці, пенсії, стипендії, соціальні допомоги, а найбільш вагомою статтею витрат залишаються витрати на продукти харчування. Економічна по-ведінка домогосподарств, що випливає з поточного рівня життя населення, структури його ресурсів і витрат, визначається як пасивна та характеризується пристосуванством, конформізмом та терплячістю населення до умов їх існування, що заважає активному розвитку соціально-економічної системи та зміни економічного мислення населення. Крива Лоренца підтверджує низький рівень диференціації населення в Україні, але зважаючи на високу долю бідного населення в країні є потреба удосконалення методики збору та формування статистичної інформації. Ключові слова: нерівність доходів, економічна поведінка, рівень добробуту, коефіцієнт Джині, крива Лоренца.

From 1992 to 2014, Brazil experienced a decline in income inequality along with a significant increase in schooling level, though the latter was more pronounced among women. Brazil also experienced a decline in returns to education, whereas an opposite trend was observed in several developed countries and China. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of educational, marital, and labor market factors on the income inequality of married couples. We also analyze how changes in educational assortative mating affect their income. Our findings suggest that changes in educational marital sorting parameters had a small but statistically significant effect on household income inequality. We show that growth in female labor force participation and a decrease in the gender wage gap explain part of the decline of the Gini coefficient. Educational factors also explain a part of that decline. Nevertheless, the main driver of the reduction in income inequality among couples appears to be the overall decrease in the educational wage gap.

This article focuses on the cross-country distribution of mining patent families during the period of 1970 − 2018. Alternatives measures of concentration indicate that only a few countries account for most mining inventions (e.g., China, Germany, Japan, the United States), and that the composition of such countries has remained relatively stable over time. This is also true for patent families of all technology fields. On the other hand, the evidence shows that those countries relatively specialized in mining technologies do not necessarily have a high share of mining inventions (e.g., Peru and Indonesia). These stylized facts are complemented with panel-regression models of the number of mining patent families—distinguishing between patented inventions and utility models—-, of mining patent-family ranks, and of relative specialization in mining. The empirical findings show that important drivers of mining patent families are mineral prices and production, family features, and the number of patent families of all technology fields (i.e., overall inventive performance). Moreover, the evidence shows that increments in mineral rents/GDP have a positive impact on the likelihood of relative specialization in some mining technologies, such as Blasting, Mining, and Processing.

Aim: The purpose of this paper is to bring together theory and policy of (personal) income distribution on the one hand and competition policy on the other hand. Design / research: The methods used in this paper cover a brief model set-up, followed by a numerical model-calibration. Thereafter, we present a model simulation and proceed to a Gini decomposition. Herewith, we are able to demonstrate how market imperfections translate into a higher concentration of personal incomes. Conclusions / findings: Our major finding is that only a rigorous competition policy is qualified to not only correct for market imperfections, but also to fight a greater inequality of personal incomes ex-ante. Originality / value of the article: This contribution provides – to our knowledge for the first time – a simultaneous explanation for stagnating, if not falling real wages and a deteriorating development of inequality of personal incomes, as measured by the Gini coefficient ex-ante. The US economy is a case study for this double observation, but many more developed economies may follow in the foreseeable future. Limitations of the research: The implication of the research is that long before government intervenes income distribution via taxes and transfers, competition policy should correct for market imperfections and thereby reduce the inequality of personal incomes. Unfortunately, to this point, we observe a lack of meaningful macroeconomic indicators for market imperfections and hence the possibility to conduct broad econometric studies in this area of investigation.

BackgroundThere is a lack of consensus on the relationship between economic inequality and mental health, which may be due to the measures of inequality used in empirical studies. We studied this relationship using individual and aggregate measures of economic inequality, and tested whether there is an interaction between the individual and the aggregate levels.MethodsWe used data from a nationally representative Mexican health survey (Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición, n=44 324) where depressive symptoms were measured through a validated 7-item version of the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. We estimated multilevel models employing aggregate inequality measures (Gini coefficient) and the individual-level framework of advantageous and disadvantageous inequality, where economic status comprised absolute wealth, relative deprivation and relative affluence.ResultsThe three facets of economic status were independently associated with depressive symptoms, while Gini coefficients showed no associations. Absolute wealth and relative affluence were associated with lower depressive symptoms while relative deprivation was associated with higher depressive symptoms. However, interaction models indicated an interplay between the Gini and relative affluence: higher status became a risk factor at high levels of aggregate economic inequality. For those at the top of the economic hierarchy, being in a context of high inequality more than doubles our measure of depressive symptoms—from 2.08 (95% CI 1.28 to 2.87) to 6.29 (95% CI 4.1 to 8.5) for state inequality and from 2.40 (95% CI 1.64 to 3.16) to 6.24 (95% CI 3.87 to 8.62) for municipal inequality.ConclusionWe provided a novel perspective on the economic gradient in mental health, and on how high aggregate economic inequality may harm also the better off. Policymakers need to consider the consequences of economic inequalities, which can harm the mental health of both those at the bottom and the top of the socioeconomic ladder.

To describe the trends of socioeconomic disparity in global vision loss burden associated with diabetic retinopathy (DR) based on prevalence and years lived with disability (YLDs). In the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2017 study, we extracted global, regional, national, and World Bank categorical epidemiological data in vision impairment by time and age. We searched the Human development index (HDI) from the Human Development Report. Pearson correlation, linear regression, and Kruskal–Wallis test were conducted to analyze the correlation between YLD rates and HDI. We used the Gini coefficient and concentration index to evaluate the socioeconomic inequality trendency. The global and World Bank categorical prevalence and YLDs increased from 1990 to 2017, and rose with ageing. The age-standardized prevalence and YLD rates varied geographically and highest in the Eastern Mediterranean countries. Higher vision loss burden of DR was concentrated in countries with medium level of socioeconomic development, including lower/upper middle-income and medium/high-HDI countries. The Gini coefficient decreased from 0.572 in 1990 to 0.542 in 2017, showing the decreasing between-country inequality. The concentration index decreased from 0.153 in 2000 to 0.061 in 2017, showing the reducing socioeconomic-associated disparity. The vision loss burden of DR increased in the past few decades, with a notable declining socioeconomic disparity since 2000. Our results highlight the necessity to provide more services to reduce the vision loss burden.

We examine the relationship between income inequality and house prices for a panel of 17 OECD countries over the period 1870 to 2015. Our identification strategy takes advantage of exogenous variation in culturally weighted communist influence to instrument for within‐country variations in income inequality. Controlling for endogeneity, time, and country fixed effects, our results suggest that an increase in income inequality has a significant negative effect on real house prices. This finding is robust to the use of both the Gini coefficient and top income share as measures of income inequality and the use of absolute and relative income inequality measures, as well as a range of other robustness checks. We examine crime as a mechanism through which income inequality influences housing prices and find that the theft rate is a channel via which higher income inequality contributes to lower house prices.

Research background: This paper analyses how different income sources affect the level of inequality in Poland, with focus on the role of family and children related allowances in decreasing income inequalities in 2015–2017. Therefore, the study has focused on the various subgroups of households with children. Purpose: The paper is aimed at examining the extent to which family and children related allowances affect household income inequality and identifying whether they affect inequality in various groups of households in the same way. Methodology: The study was carried out on micro-data gathered by Eurostat. To examine the extent to which different income components affect income inequality, we decompose the Gini coefficient according to the method introduced by Lerman and Yitzhaki. Results: Our study revealed that for most households with children, the inequality-reducing effect due to family and children related allowances increased in 2017 compared to 2015. However, despite the additional child-raising benefit under the “Family 500+” programme, income taxes and social security contributions remained by far the most important factor in reducing household income inequalities in Poland. Novelty: To our knowledge, no study has yet attempted to assess the extent to which family and child-allowances affect income inequality based on real data. The present analysis takes a step towards filling this gap. Unlike other studies based on microsimulation, in this paper we made use of the representative micro-data derived from the EU-SILC study.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” According to the World Economic Forum (2021), income disparity is at the top of global risks in the coming years. The development of income inequality is a growing concern worldwide, particularly since the Great Recession. This study is based on available data on the Gini coefficient of equivalized disposable income from 2005 to 2019 for the 27 European Union countries. We found that the indicator’s value demonstrates a reasonably even distribution of income (not exceeding 40%) in all European Union countries, except Bulgaria. We used the FORECAST ETS function (Excel for Microsoft 365) that is based on the AAA version of the Exponential Smoothing (ETS) algorithm to conduct our analysis. We grouped the EU 27 countries to investigate income equality behavior. According to the interval’s median of the sample’s standard deviation, we selected Italy, Spain, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria for further investigation. We conclude the absence of general trends in the inequality of income distribution in society due to the financial crisis factors. The research presents exploratory insights into income inequality in the European Union.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) has been linked to poor health. Economic position may be an important risk factor for IPV. We examined the association between economic position and IPV at country and individual levels. We analyzed Demographic and Health Surveys data of 187,716 ever-partnered women between ages 10 and 59 from 20 low- and middle-income countries. We calculated direct age-standardized 12-month prevalence of physical IPV and performed ecological analysis using Gini coefficients and Concentration indexes to assess correlation with 12-month prevalence of physical IPV. We conducted multivariable logistic regression for each country to assess the association between wealth status and physical IPV and a meta-analysis of the regression model to present results across countries. Compared to the Poorest quintile, odds of IPV among wealthier quintiles varied by country. In the Middle quintile, India had significantly reduced IPV (OR 0.75, 95%CI: 0.68-0.83). In the Richer and Richest quintiles, 4 and 6 countries had significant reductions in IPV, respectively. Only Mozambique was found to have significant increased IPV in the wealthiest quintile (OR 2.51, 95%CI: 1.45-4.38). Gini coefficient and physical IPV had a correlation coefficient of 0.502 ( p value 0.033), while Concentration index had –0.276 ( p value .253). Standardized prevalence for physical IPV ranged from 1.58% to 18.91%. Findings suggest that the relationship between wealth and IPV vary considerably in the included low- and middle-income countries, and that risk of IPV may not necessarily be higher among women in lower wealth brackets. Mozambique was the only country with increased odds of IPV among the Richest group as compared to the Poorest group. This study provides evidence IPV may transcend economic boundaries, and that studies looking at the link between inequality and IPV are paramount for designing adequate preventative policies.

This paper studies the effect of income (wealth) inequality on interpersonal trust. We propose a theoretical framework that links trust, trustworthiness and inequality. The key feature is that agents do not necessarily observe the entire income distribution but base their assessment on reference groups (i.e. they might hold a biased view of reality). In this framework the negative impact of inequality on interpersonal trust is related to the individual-specific perception of inequality. This has important implications for the empirical analyses since researchers typically do not observe perceptions but only objective measures of inequality (e.g. the Gini coefficient). We show that the use of the latter is appropriate only under restrictive assumptions and in general will result in an underestimation of the true effect. An unbiased estimate of the effect of inequality on trust can be obtained with a measure of individual-specific perceptions of inequality. Survey data support our framework. Perceptions of higher inequality exert a strong negative effect on trust. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at (10.1007/s10888-021-09490-x).

Hablar de pobreza por ingreso y los efectos que ha tenido este indicador a raíz de la presencia del Covid-19 es de gran importancia en la actualidad, debido al fuerte impacto que ha provocado en la vida de las personas, privándolas de satisfacer sus necesidades dignamente. El objetivo de este estudio descriptivo es analizar la evolución del indicador de la pobreza por ingreso en el Ecuador, tomando en cuenta la presencia del Covid-19 y su impacto en los niveles de pobreza hasta el 2020; sustentado en los métodos de revisión bibliográfica, hermenéutico y el análisis de contenido; así como en al análisis de las variables macroeconómicas como el empleo, PIB y coeficiente de Gini. Los resultados obtenidos nos permiten tener una noción de la compleja situación por la que atraviesa el país debido a la pandemia que ha provocado el retroceso de 10 años en el índice de pobreza, una caída del 9% en el crecimiento económico y un suceso alarmante tras presenciarse una mayor tasa de pobreza que de empleo con una diferencia de 1,6%; agudizando la precariedad de la vida económica de las personas más vulnerables.

Background Although understanding changes in the body weight distribution and trends in obesity inequality plays a key role in assessing the causes and persistence of obesity, limited research on this topic is available for Cuba. This study thus analyzed changes in body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) distributions and obesity inequality over a 9-year period among urban Cuban adults. Methods Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were first applied to the data from the 2001 and 2010 National Survey on Risk Factors and Chronic Diseases to identify a rightward shift in both the BMI and WC distributions over the 2001–2010 period. A Shapley technique decomposed the increase in obesity prevalence into a mean-growth effect and a (re)distributional component. A univariate assessment of obesity inequality was then derived by calculating both the Gini and generalized entropy (GE) measures. Lastly, a GE-based decomposition partitioned overall obesity inequality into within-group and between-group values. Results Despite some relatively pronounced left-skewing, both the BMI and WC distributions exhibited a clear rightward shift to which the increases in general and central obesity can be mostly attributed. According to the Gini coefficients, both general and central obesity inequality increased over the 2001–2010 period, from 0.105 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.103–0.106] to 0.110 [95% CI = 0.107–0.112] and from 0.083 [95% CI = 0.082–0.084] to 0.085 [95% CI = 0.084–0.087], respectively. The GE-based decomposition further revealed that both types of inequality were accounted for primarily by within-group inequality (93.3%/89.6% and 87.5%/84.8% in 2001/2010 for general/central obesity, respectively). Conclusions Obesity inequality in urban Cuba worsened over the 2001–2010 time period, with within-group inequality in overall obesity dominant over between-group inequality. In general, the results also imply that the rise in obesity inequality is immune to health care system characteristics.

Using the 2009/10 Botswana Core Welfare Indicator Survey (BCWIS) and 2015/16 Botswana Multi-Topic Household Survey (BMTHS) datasets, this article discusses inequality in food and non-food expenses ...

This article analyzes a newly constructed individual level dataset of every English death and probate from 1892–1992. This analysis shows that the twentieth century’s “Great Equalization” of wealth stalled in mid-century. The probate rate, which captures the proportion of English holding any significant wealth at death rose from 10 percent in the 1890s to 40 percent by 1950 and has stagnated to 1992. Despite the large declines in the wealth share of the top 1 percent, from 73 to 20 percent, the median English individual died with almost nothing throughout. All changes in inequality after 1950 involve a reshuffling of wealth within the top 30 percent. I translate the individual level data to synthetic households; the majority have at least one member probated. Yet the bottom 60 percent of households hold only 12 percent of all wealth, at their peak wealth-holding level, in the early 1990s. I also compare the new wealth data with existing estimates of top wealth shares, home-ownership trends, wealth survey distributions, aggregate wealth, and the wealth Gini coefficient.

The view that expansionary monetary policy can exacerbate both income and wealth inequality by increasing asset prices has become increasingly popular. The aim of this paper is to study the distributive effects of monetary policy on wealth inequality. In the first part of this research, we develop a simple framework based on accounting identity to examine the redistributive repercussions of changes in monetary policy on net worth through different channels. Based on this framework, in the second part of the paper, we show empirical evidence concerning the effects of monetary policy on wealth inequality in the US. To derive this, we combined macro and micro data, and proceeded in two steps. Firstly, we estimated a Proxy structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model, combining high-frequency identification used as external instruments with a classic SVAR, to measure the response of the real and financial variables that could affect wealth inequality after an expansive monetary policy shock. Considering this information, we then used the microdata of the Survey of Consumer Finance (US, 2016) and simulated changes to the value of a household's assets and liabilities, as well as the inflation rate, produced by an expansive monetary policy. We considered three different time horizons and the whole of the distribution, measured by the Gini coefficients, and the simulation results suggest that wealth inequality increases after an expansive monetary policy shock. Additionally, focusing on the net worth by deciles, we found a relevant result. The expansive monetary policy shock substantially increases the net worth of the richest and the poorest households, while the middle class tends to benefit the least. Monetary policy on stock prices is the most important driver of the significant increases in net wealth among the richest households, while its effect on debt is most significant among the poorest.

This paper is an empirical study that used econometric techniques to analyze the causal relationship between income inequality and financial disturbances in developed economies. The author used annual data from panels of OECD countries. In this study, income distribution is represented by the share of GDP that accrued to the top 10 percent earners, wage share of GDP, and disposable income Gini Coefficient in annual data series. The test included three channels, through which income inequality may affect the financial system. The results suggest that the effect of income inequality on the national financial stability is ambiguous, as the study concluded that this effect is radically different according to the channel tested. The study found that a rise in income inequality has a negative impact on public finance, but it has a positive effect on the private debt market, and on the external balance from a financial stability standpoint.

This paper explores the contextual and government response factors to the first-wave of the COVID-19 pandemic for 25 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. It considers configurations of: obesity rates; proportions of elderly people; inequality rates; country travel openness and COVID-19 testing regimes, against outcomes of COVID-19 mortality and case rates. It finds COVID-19 testing per case to be at the root of sufficient solutions for successful country responses, combined, in the most robust solutions, with either high proportions of elderly people or low international travel levels at the start of pandemic. The paper then locates its sample countries in relation to existing welfare typologies across two dimensions based on total social expenditure and proportional differences between the GINI coefficient before and after taxes and transfers. It finds that countries generally categorised as “liberal” in most existing typologies did the most poorly in their first-wave COVID-19 response.

The Gini coefficient of labor earnings in Brazil fell by nearly a fifth between 1995 and 2012, from 0.50 to 0.41. The decline in other measures of earnings inequality was even larger, with the 90-10 percentile ratio falling by almost 40 percent. Applying micro-econometric decomposition techniques, this study parses out the proximate determinants of this substantial reduction in earnings inequality. Although a falling education premium did play a role, in line with received wisdom, this study finds that a reduction in the returns to labor market experience was a much more important factor driving lower wage disparities. It accounted for 53 percent of the observed decline in the Gini index during the period. Reductions in horizontal inequalities – the gender, race, regional and urban-rural wage gaps, conditional on human capital and institutional variables – also contributed. Two main factors operated against the decline: a greater disparity in wage premia to different sectors of economic activity, and the “paradox of progress”: the mechanical inequality-increasing effect of a more educated labor force when returns to education are convex.

Humans globally have similar nutritional needs but face large differences in natural resource endowments and local food production. This study quantifies food-system inequality across countries on the basis of natural resource inputs, food/nutrient outputs and nutrition/health outcomes, from 1970 to 2010. Animal source foods and overweight/obesity show rapid convergence while availability of selected micronutrients show slower convergence. However, all variables are more equally distributed than national income per capita, the Gini coefficient of which declined from 0.71 to 0.65. Inequalities in total and animal-source dietary energy declined from 0.16 to 0.10 and 0.55 to 0.36, respectively. There was convergence in overweight/obesity prevalence from 0.39 to 0.27, while undernutrition and stunting became increasingly concentrated in a few high-burden countries. Characterizing cross-country inequalities in agricultural resources, foods, nutrients and health can help identify critical opportunities for agriculture and food policies, as well as prioritize research objectives and funding allocation for the coming decade. This study draws on publicly available data to examine food-system inequality across countries. Changes in natural resource inputs, food/nutrient outputs and nutrition/health indicators reveal that inequality generally declined, but did so very differently across variables.

This study examined the influence of remittances and macro-economic variables on poverty in ASEAN-4 countries (i.e., Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines) over the 1991 to 2019 period using a panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The study documented that remittance and unemployment have a significant effect on poverty reduction in the long run. Meanwhile, economic growth and the Gini coefficient were found to have an insignificant influence on poverty reduction. The speed of adjustment due to shocks in the short term is restored within eight months into the long-run equilibrium. Our results emphasize that poverty in ASEAN-4 must be addressed with pragmatic macroeconomic policies, especially policies that affect the poor's income. Besides, with the real contribution of remittances, the strengthening of international cooperation related to migrant workers is also essential to alleviate poverty.JEL Classification: F22, F24, I32, J01, O15How to Cite:Fahrizal, T., Aliasuddin., & Majid, M. S. A. (2021). Do Remittances Matter for Poverty Reduction in ASEAN?. Signifikan: Jurnal Ilmu Ekonomi, 10(1), 13-30. https://doi.org/10.15408/sjie.v10i1.19154.

We analyze a political competition model of redistributive policies. We provide an equilibrium existence result and a full characterization of the net transfers to the different income groups. We also derive several testable predictions about the way in which the net group transfers and the after-tax Gini coefficient vary with the main parameters of the model. In accordance with the theory, the empirical evidence from a sample of developed and developing democracies supports a highly statistically significant association between: (i) the net group transfer and the gap between the population and the group mean initial income, and (ii) the net group transfer (and resp., the Gini coefficient) and power sharing disproportionality. In addition, the data also provide some empirical evidence confirming a significant relationship between the net transfers to the poor (and resp., the Gini) and the concern of the political parties with income inequality.

The welfare of a country depends on its economic development. In order to have the impact on it, we should have a possibility to quantitatively assess its situation at the desired point in time. Economic development, as a multifaceted and complex phenomenon, is reflected in two dimensions – intensity and uniformity. These mentioned above can be viewed as partial indicators of dynamics. Two main approaches to measuring development uniformity can be distinguished. In one of the cases, it is measured on the basis of an index that includes the main results of the country's economic development. In the other case, the values of the indicators reflecting all the essential development actions are combined in one appropriate way. From a scientific point of view, the second approach is more accurate as it allows for a better assessment of the complex nature of a country’s economic development. On the other hand, its application today is still problematic due to the fact that the models for this differ in terms of both the number and composition of indicators. For this reason, it is not possible to compare countries. Therefore, in international practice, the economic development of countries is measured by gross domestic product per capita (GDP). Based on GDP indicator, the method for the measurement of uniformity is proposed and the essence of which is the ratio of the length of the ideal trajectory of the development during the period under review to the length of the actual trajectory. Without ruling out the appropriateness of such an approach for assessing development uniformity, it makes sense to look for alternative methods. In this sense, methods that allow assessment of the extent of fluctuations of the phenomenon under consideration as an essential feature of development dynamics are suitable. These include the Gini coefficient, which is determined from the Lorenz curve.

We re‐examine the theoretical and empirical relationship between income inequality and long‐run economic growth in an endogenous growth model with a flat tax on income, distributive conflicts among agents, and median voter dynamics. We show that when government spends tax revenue on the provision of public goods in the form of both production and consumption services, the theoretical relationship between inequality and economic growth is neither strictly positive nor strictly negative, but ambiguous. An empirical evaluation of the theoretical findings is carried out by applying a semi‐parametric model on a sample of 63 countries for the period 1991–2017. Results show that the relationship between income inequality and growth takes the form of an inverted U‐shape in that income inequality initially has a positive impact on growth up to an average Gini coefficient threshold of 35.92, beyond which it negatively impacts on growth.

Much recent work has focused on how crime concentrates on particular streets within communities. This is the first study to examine how such concentrations vary across the neighborhoods of a city. The analysis evaluates the extent to which neighborhoods have characteristic levels of crime concentration and then tests two hypotheses for explaining these variations: the compositional hypothesis, which posits that neighborhoods whose streets vary in land usage or demographics have corresponding disparities in levels of crime; and the social control hypothesis, which posits that neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy limit crime to fewer streets. We used 911 dispatches from Boston, MA, to map violent crimes across the streets of the city. For each census tract we calculated the concentration of crime across the streets therein using the generalized Gini coefficient and cross-time stability in the locations of hotspots. Neighborhoods did have characteristic levels of concentration that were best explained by the compositional hypothesis in the form of demographic and land use diversity. In addition, ethnic heterogeneity predicted higher concentrations of crime over and above what would be expected given the characteristics of the individual streets, suggesting it exacerbated disparities in crime. The extent to which crime concentrates represents an underexamined aspect of how crime manifests in each community. It is driven in part by the diversity of places in the neighborhood, but also can be influenced by neighborhood-level processes. Future work should continue to probe the sources and consequences of these variations.

La creciente preocupación sobre la desigualdad y la falta de oportunidades equitativas para el desarrollo económico y social de la población son cuestiones que han generado amplio debate. Esta discusión cobro aun mayor importancia a partir de la crisis financiera internacional del año 2008, hecho ampliamente estudiado (Stiglitz, 2012, 2015; Piketty, 2008, 2013). Históricamente, el Perú ha sido uno de los países con mayor desigualdad económica de Sudamérica, medido por el coeficiente de Gini, el cual ha fluctuado alrededor de 0.6. Basado en los estudios de Mendoza, Leyva y Flor (2011), Yamada y Castro (2006) y Figueroa (1993) el presente artículo desarrolla un análisis descriptivo y econométrico, con el objetivo de estudiar la evolución y principales determinantes de la desigualdad en el Perú. Para tal fin, fue estimado el coeficiente de Gini ajustado por cuentas nacionales. Adicionalmente, fue utilizado un modelo de globalización y desigualdad desarrollado por el FMI (WEO, 2007), para analizar el efecto del proceso de globalización sobre la distribución de los ingresos. Finalmente, fue aplicado un modelo dinámico simple de series temporales, con el objeto de estudiar si el crecimiento del PBI puede por sí solo explicar la variabilidad de la distribución. Los resultados muestran que al realizar el ajuste en la estimación del coeficiente de Gini el nivel de inequidad es mayor al estimado por la metodología clásica. De esta forma, la evidencia encontrada está en concordancia con los resultados obtenidos en estudios previos.

Using the framework of National Transfer Accounts (NTA), this paper calculates the economic inequalities by age and analyses its implications of inequity for the living generations in India. Economic inequality is measured by the standard Gini coefficient using household consumption and labour income data from the official national sample surveys. Inequity for the living generations is measured by the NTA’s concept of Lifecycle Deficit for four age groups (Young, Youth, Adults and Elderly). To highlight the nature and magnitude of inequity by types of economic inequalities and years, both income and consumption inequalities are calculated by age for financial year 2004–2005 and 2011–2012. Economic inequalities by age are integrated into the inequities for the living generations by modifying the Sen’s measure of inequality-discounted per capita income. Main results show that higher inequalities result in larger and differential impacts on inequity of the living generations. In particular, the income inequality has a larger effect on increasing inequity than consumption inequality. These results offer unambiguous evidence for the age-specific inequality effects on inequity in the living generations and show important implications in India’s policies for design of broader and complementary distributional objectives in terms of simultaneous reduction in economic inequalities and inequities for the living generations. Subject to comparability of socio-economic structure in a generational economy like India, the methodology and implications of this paper are of general relevance and applicability for developing countries in the Asia–Pacific Region and elsewhere in the world.

We examine the impact of sector-based reform on income inequality, concentrating on state banking deregulation in the USA, for which we employ annual balanced panel data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, covering the period from 1970 to 2000, for our baseline analysis. The estimation strategy exploits the variation across states and years in the enactment of laws that remove restrictions on in-state bank branch geographical expansion and cross-state bank business operational expansion to compute the effects of developments in the financial sector on income inequality. We find evidence that inequality on average decreases with within-state branching reform, whereas it on average increases with between-state banking deregulation. Utilizing five different measures of inequality (top decile income share, Atkinson index, the Gini coefficient, relative mean deviation, and Theil entropy index), we determine that our finding materially depends on which measure of income inequality is being considered. We argue that this has not been stressed in the previous literature.

This article discusses about the effects of public school education on ethnic group distribution in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period, with Changhua Plain in central Taiwan as an example. Many Han Chinese migrated to Taiwan from various coastal areas in Southeast China under the rule of Qing dynasty (1684-1895). The different ethnic groups were distributed in such a way that populations from the same ancestral home lived together while those of different descent became segregated. Transitioning into the Japanese colonial period in 1895, did the promotion of Japanese education assimilate different ancestral ethnic groups in Taiwan and change their distribution on the island? To answer this question, this article starts by organizing the 1901 and 1926 distribution of ancestral ethnic groups across 27 Changhua Plain areas in central Taiwan, as well as quantifying the levels of ethnic group distribution by the Gini coefficient. This is followed by applying difference-in-differences estimation to examine the effects of Japanese public school education on ancestral ethnic group distribution.