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In China, income diversification has become a useful method for the rural households to smooth their income and maintain a sustainable mode of consumption. Additionally, income diversification affects rural consumption differently in regions with different income levels. In this paper, I have analyzed the impacts of income diversification on the peasants’ consumption in the Chinese rural areas with the provincial level panel data from 1998 to 2015. The findings indicate that income diversification can increase the Chinese peasants’ consumption, but the consumption of the peasants from the low- and the high- income subsamples of provinces are more sensitive to income diversification while the peasants from the middle-income provinces are not so sensitive to income diversification. Moreover, there is a significant ratchet effect and demonstration effect in the peasants’ consumption, as is stated by the traditional literature. This paper contributes to the research by testing the impact of peasants’ income sources diversification on the rural consumption and investigating its mechanism against the changing social background in China with the latest panel data.

International audience; There is considerable evidence from a variety of sources to suggest that well-being is a function of relative income. These findings have been used to explain the Easterlin Paradox, whereby a rise in income for all does not lead to a rise in average happiness in a country (even though the cross section relationship between income and happiness is positive). This relativity of utility has led to calls for policy to focus away from GDP. I here first discuss some of the evidence that well-being is indeed relative in income, but then consider two relatively little-analysed issues to suggest that there may continue to be a role for GDP per capita in happiness-based policy: the inequality of subjective well-being, and the specific case of those in income poverty.

Agricultural income volatility has become a major hurdle for Irish farmers and policymakers to overcome in their drive to increase investment, production and ultimately income in the sector. This paper studies data from 927 farms in the Teagasc National Farm Survey between 2005 and 2013, the first 9 years of the decoupled subsidy era. The primary income support for European farmers, the single farm payment (SFP), is analysed in the context of its relationship with market income risk, i.e. farm income excluding subsidies. Detrended measures of market income variability are regressed on a large set of control variables. The findings suggest that the amount of SFP received by farmers has a strong and statistically significant relationship with agricultural income volatility.

Background: Section 7 of the Income Tax Act 58 of 1962 (the Act) was introduced as an anti-avoidance measure to prevent tax avoidance by means of a donation, settlement or other disposition in various types of schemes. In terms of this section, in certain circumstances, ‘income’ is deemed to be income received by or accrued to a taxpayer. Despite the fact that the term ‘income’ has been used in Section 7 from the time that it was first introduced into the Act and the fact that it is defined in section 1 of the Act, there still remains uncertainty regarding the intention of the legislature and the actual meaning of the term in terms of Section 7. Aim: The objective of the study is to understand whether the term ‘income’, as used in Sections 7(2) to 7(8) of the Act, is used in its defined sense or if it should be ascribed a different meaning. Setting: This article examines existing literature in a South African income tax environment. Method: A non-empirical study of existing literature was conducted by performing a historical analysis within a South African context. A doctrinal research approach was followed. Results: Possible interpretations determined include ‘income’ as defined in section 1 of the Act, namely ‘gross income’ (also defined) less exempt income, ‘gross income’, profits and gains or ‘taxable income’ (i.e. ‘income’ less allowable expenditure, deductions and losses) and ‘gross income’ less related deductible expenses and losses. Conclusion: It was found that the meaning of ‘income’, for purposes of Sections 7(2) to 7(8), remains an uncertainty, and it is recommended that the wording of Section 7 be amended to reflect the intended meaning thereof.

The distribution of income is paramount in discussions of the res publica. Two normative arguments justify public concern over the distribution of income: one departing from concerns over social welfare, justifying public intervention on grounds of equity; while a second views redistribution of income as the solution to a market failure, justifying such intervention on grounds of efficiency. Although historically redistribution followed from charity, it is unlikely that charity sufficiently redistributes income, as the distribution of income represents a public good. Redistribution following from a democratic system, whereby states intervene in the income distribution through tax-and-transfer systems, brings forth the question of how much states should redistribute. Large national variation in tax-and-transfer systems exists, yet all countries devote a substantial share of tax revenues to income transfers. The main theory explaining variation across countries is critiqued with regard to its empirical success, and two new arguments explaining deviations from theory are introduced, based on the perceptions of voters.

Many low-income countries, such as Haiti, have high ambitions and socioeconomic needs to achieve substantial income growth, especially for the poorest income quintiles. This situation raises the question of policy prioritization, which is often difficult to address, since reliable country-specific micro data are scarce in most low-income countries. Although many studies have investigated the determinants of growth of gross domestic product, less is known about the factors influencing household incomes at the lowest segments of the income distribution. Focusing on the specific case of Haiti, a country with one of the lowest income levels, this paper proposes an approach to handle this challenge: it estimates income drivers for the poorest two income quintiles from cross-country regressions. The results suggest that maintaining macroeconomic stability as well as investing in human and physical capital would not only be associated with faster overall economic growth, but also with even faster income growth for the poorest segments of the population. Thus, there need not be a trade-off between inequality and growth. Economies could foster faster growth while also increasing inclusiveness, ensuring that everyone can live up to their potential.

Using panel data from the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income (SOI) Division, we find that most individuals do not experience a reduction in inflation-adjusted spendable income after claiming Social Security. We also examine the composition of income after claiming and find that both Social Security benefits and non-Social Security retirement distributions typically represent substantial shares of income. Examining the five-year period from one year before individuals first receive Social Security retirement benefits to three years after, 81 percent of individuals had income, either directly or through a spouse, from employer retirement plans, annuities, or IRAs; and another 8 percent had a Form 1099-R (indicating a retirement account transaction, such as a rollover, that did not generate income), a Form 5498 (indicating IRA ownership), or both. This study uses the SOI 1999 Edited Panel of individual income tax returns, with information through tax year 2010, supplemented with data from information returns. We structure the data to follow individual taxpayers—specifically, individuals who were the primary or secondary taxpayer on a joint return or the primary taxpayer on a non-joint return in 1999—rather than tax returns. Information returns and various schedules filed with Form 1040 allow us to allocate labor income, Social Security benefits, and retirement income (pension, annuity, and IRA distributions) to primary and secondary filers on joint returns. Information returns also allow us to measure the income of all 1999 taxpayers through 2010 regardless of whether they filed a tax return in a subsequent year or not. We focus on working individuals age 55 to 61 in 1999 who did not receive Social Security benefits in 1999. Comparison with U.S. population counts suggests that nearly all individuals in this category filed a tax return in 1999.

Extending the current empirical discourse on the inverted-U to cover non-farm households, this paper replaces the land size (proxy for wealth) with a fully-composed household income from the GLSS6 data that incorporates the value of land and five other components as income. After choosing the ZIP model over the PRM, based on the corrected versions of the Vuong test, the findings supported the inverted-U relationship between household income and child labour. This implies that, at lower levels of income, parents are non-altruistic, using more child labourers with increases in income but become altruistic towards their children at income levels beyond GH₵11,656.2760 ($5,834.26) for all households; GH₵11,308.3877 ($5,660.14) and GH₵22,026.4658 ($11,024.81) for the rural and urban households respectively. The analysis showed that rural-located parents become altruistic at relatively lower levels of income compared to their urban counterparts. Policy should aim at increasing the average income of households.

A good infrastructure is actually the base behind the growth of an economy. In the present age of globalization accessibility of information is a very important component of infrastructure. Studies carried out on the effect of internet on economic growth are mostly either on high income countries only or on a large number of countries belonging to different income groups. Keeping in mind the differential impact of internet on economic growth of countries with different initial conditions, we have attempted in this chapter a study on the impact of internet use on economic growth in 39 lower middle income and low income countries during 2002-2011. Applying panel data regression techniques we have found a positive significant impact of internet use on economic growth of low income countries. The emergence of crisis adversely affected this growth process, overruling the positive impact of internet use.

What is income? It’s a seemingly simple question that’s surprisingly hard to answer. Income is the basis for assigning tax burdens, for distributing transfers, and for broader normative issues of inequality and justice. Yet we lack a shared conception of income, and a pure, rigorous definition of income is impossible. In this Article I review the intellectual history of the income concept among tax and fiscal theorists to show the difficulty of the problem, and also to show that some important debates about what’s proper under an income tax can be explained instead as arguments over competing income definitions that necessarily incorporate policy choices. These insights are applied to more modern questions, like the role of tax expenditure analysis and optimal income tax theory. I also perform — for the first time in the literature — a close examination and comparison of 12 different income definitions used by the federal government for different purposes. This examination illustrates that there is wide range of income concepts actively in use, but that the measure of income for tax purposes has a prominent and growing role. This Article concludes that income is not a pure, external concept, but actually a constructed concept that necessarily embodies policy, and therefore political, goals. The differences between the income concepts and definitions examined here result directly from the policy goals of the various agencies, analysts, and scholars using those concepts. Therefore, the increasing reliance on the measure of income for tax purposes risks erroneously exporting what are essentially tax policy decisions into non-tax areas, such as transfer policy, health care subsidization, higher education grants and loans, and broader discussions on income inequality and economic justice.

This study examines the relationship between income and health by using an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which increased benefits to households with at least two children, as a source of exogenous variations of earnings. The paper adds to previous work by: (1) estimating treatment effects on the treated using simulated EITC benefits and longitudinal data; (2) testing whether health effects vary across the three different parts of the EITC schedule; (3) examining the role of food expenditures and health insurance as potential mechanisms. The study finds that income improves the likelihood of affected heads of households reporting to be in excellent or very good health by 6.9 to 8.9 percentage points. The effects are largest in the plateau phase of the EITC schedule, where previous researchers have identified pure income effects of the program. The results are robust to several additional specifications, including a semi-parametric DD model and specifications that account for the potential endogeneity of sample. When examining potential channels underlying the relationship between income and health, I find that affected household increase their food expenditures by 10.5 to 20.3 percent and are 1.52 percent more likely to have health insurance coverage.

Fixed income instruments are another of the major asset classes that should be understood by investors. They are more commonly called “bonds” in the daily vernacular of the financial world and there are several types of bonds. For simplistic purposes for now let’s just say that they (unlike time deposit or money market instruments) are an asset class that usually extend over a period lasting longer than time deposits and with a maturities that may be between 2 years lasting up to (in the case of US Treasury bonds) 30 years.

Data on basic conditions of employment, total wage bills of staff and workers are collected and compiled through The Reporting Form System on Labor Statistics, The Sample Survey System on Labor Force, and The System of Rural Social and Economic Surveys by the Department of Population and Employment Statistics, the NBS. The Reporting Form System on Labor Statistics covers corporate units (does not include township enterprises, private units or self-employed individuals). The scope of survey and estimate of The Sample Survey System on Labor Force are the whole country. The scope of statistics in the chapter is the population aged 16 and over of the whole country. The System of Rural Social and Economic Surveys covers all rural areas below township level in China.

This paper explores the sources of income inequality among households aged 65 and older and the extent to which individual actions, competitive markets, and public policy can improve the financial well-being of those with low income. Three different types of retirement wealth are identified on the basis that they 1) are acquired in very different ways; 2) vary in their contribution to income inequality among older households; and 3) require unique individual behaviors and public policies to increase the income that they generate. Continued labor force participation is the most effective way to increase income in retirement but opportunities offered by the labor market favor highly skilled people and are likely to increase income inequality. Income inequality is likely to be a continuing reality for households of retirement age.

In Basic Income. A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght table two arguments that focus explicitly on the European Union. Their first argument concerns strategies to introduce basic income at the national level: VPV to cope with the threat of selective immigration, the sustainability of national basic income imposes ‘firm limits on hospitality’. The second argument concerns the introduction of a pan-European basic income: VPV to support this claim, I sketch a normative framework with regard to free movement and non-discrimination. My second claim concerns VP&V’s case for pan-European basic income. If it is true that the EU’s principal justice-related problem is that European integration has diminished core capabilities of national welfare states, such as national redistribution and national stabilization, without adequately ensuring their functioning at a higher level, the remedies to that problem are essentially different from a pan-European basic income. My third claim concerns both national basic income and pan-European basic income. The starting point of VP&V’s case for basic income is compelling: we all benefit from a common inheritance, for which none of us did anything. However, more arguments are needed why basic income should be the priority amidst competing claims on the ‘gift’ constituted by past technological, economic and social progress. In fact, the need to add a social dimension to the European project militates against rather than in favour of basic income, be it national or pan-European.

The details of a queen’s income and expenditures that are examined here provide evidence of the political and economic importance of their reigns. This chapter first explains how the grander royal court functioned, how it became increasingly expensive and complicated to maintain, and how the queens’ households operated independently within it. The chapter also explores the physical space and activities of the royal households; the selection and function of the queens’ male staff especially their councils and of their female attendants the selection of their wardrobe and jewels and their participation in gift exchanges and patronage. How the queens collected and dispensed their resources had a significant impact on the economy both within and beyond the court.

A country's mix of products predicts its subsequent pattern of diversification and economic growth. But does this product mix also predict income inequality? Here we combine methods from econometrics, network science, and economic complexity to show that countries exporting complex products-as measured by the Economic Complexity Index-have lower levels of income inequality than countries exporting simpler products. Using multivariate regression analysis, we show that economic complexity is a significant and negative predictor of income inequality and that this relationship is robust to controlling for aggregate measures of income, institutions, export concentration, and human capital. Moreover, we introduce a measure that associates a product to a level of income inequality equal to the average GINI of the countries exporting that product (weighted by the share the product represents in that country's export basket). We use this measure together with the network of related products-or product space-to illustrate how the development of new products is associated with changes in income inequality. These findings show that economic complexity captures information about an economy's level of development that is relevant to the ways an economy generates and distributes its income. Moreover, these findings suggest that a country's productive structure may limit its range of income inequality. Finally, we make our results available through an online resource that allows for its users to visualize the structural transformation of over 150 countries and their associated changes in income inequality during 1963-2008. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Purpose – Emerging evidence revealed a high rate of dependence of marginal people on forest resources in developing countries for both subsistence use and cash income. The purpose of this paper is to examine the rural livelihoods welfare dimensions of community forest income in south-western Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach – Forest activities and income pattern data were collected from 160 rural households’ selected using multistage sampling approach. Descriptive statistics and Gini decomposition technique were used to analyse the data. Findings – The result shows that forest income accounts for about 38.2 per cent of total household income and was the first ranked source of income in the study area. The Gini decomposition analysis showed that access to forest income is income inequality reducing in the study area. The study findings suggests that household welfare in rural Nigeria could be improved through policies and programmes that can stimulate sustainable access to forest resources and assist households to earn income from alternative sources such as agriculture. Originality/value – The result of the study helped provide information on the uses and benefits of community forests as it affects the well-being of rural people. Also, it provides the benchmark for policy makers, government agencies and NGO's involved in rural livelihood outcome of forest communities.

This Commentary investigates whether there has been a growing divergence in the consumption of luxury and necessity goods across income classes. The analysis shows that while necessities represent a majority of the consumption basket for lower and middle income quintiles, their consumption of necessities in inflation-adjusted dollars has been declining in the face of higher prices of such goods and stagnant income growth. Higher income quintiles have seen increases in their consumption of luxuries, simultaneous with a decline in their consumption of necessities.

Recent research on U.S. levels and trends in income inequality varies substantially based on how these studies measure income. We crosswalk (move between standards) from a market income of tax units to a more comprehensive measure of income including realized capital gains of households using a unified data set and replicate common findings in the literature. By using a comprehensive income definition in the spirit of Haig-Simons, considering yearly accrued capital gains rather than focusing on the delayed reporting of capital gains that appear in Internal Revenue Service tax return data, the observed growth in income inequality and top income shares since 1989 is dramatically reduced.

This paper addresses key aspects of health inequality. We analyse in particular to what extent income determines household-specific health outcomes in rural Pakistan using our survey data. Controlling for various socio-economic characteristics, we investigate validity of the three income-health hypotheses: the Absolute Income Hypothesis, the Relative Income Hypothesis and the Income Inequality Hypothesis (IIH). Whilst these hypotheses crucially differ in their exact substance, broadly speaking, those refer to the idea that a household’s health status might be linked to the existing socio-economic environment. Households with a more favourable income position (either in absolute, relative or distributional terms) might enjoy a better health status. We employ a general empirical specification that nests different health functions as special cases. This permits testing the income-health hypotheses separately and jointly. We find that in rural Pakistan both the relative income (with respect to the relevant community) and absolute income are major determinants of health. This is in contrast to results typically reported for developed countries, where in particular the household’s absolute income position appears to matter. The study provides important insights into the causes of health inequalities. For instance, higher income improves health directly because of higher social support and other psychosocial reasons. However, we failed to confirm IIH on pure statistical grounds.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)The recent U.S. economic crisis has exposed millions of households to volatile economic circumstances triggered by job loss, reduced work hours, falling home and investment values, and cuts to social assistance programs. Several studies have found that income instability has grown in the United States over the last few decades, particularly among low-income households (Dynan, 2010; Dynan, Elmendorf,& Sichel, 2008; Gottschalk & Moffitt, 2009; Keys, 2008; Leete & Bania, 2010; Newman, 2008). For some households, these economic changes are temporary income shocks from which they will recover. For others, the insecurity of the broader economy only exacerbates long-term or persistent patterns of financial instability.Early research on income and poverty pointed to the importance of empirically assessing the dynamic nature of individual and household economic circumstances (Bane & Ellwood, 1986, 1996; Duncan, 1988; Stevens, 1994). Yet outside of research that documents general trends in earnings volatility, remarkably little is understood about the patterns and correlates of income instability for households with children. Such descriptive information is a crucial step toward understanding the scope of the problem, and whether policies and programs could be better designed to improve overall economic well-being. For example, if income instability is present and distinct from overall income, households may benefit from programs that assist them to smooth consumption in times of instability, in addition to increasing income levels. Indeed, one of the challenges with certain income support policies is that they can ''create'' income instability through income eligibility thresholds, which can lead to households losing benefits abruptly.Households living on the margins of poverty and struggling to make ends meet may be particularly vulnerable to economic fluctuations (Gosselin, 2004b). Because low-income level is often coupled with little to no savings and limited access to low-cost credit (Blau, 1999; McKernan & Ratcliffe, 2009), these households may have few options to compensate for losses when income shocks occur. Middleincome households may also be vulnerable, with growing income inequality in the United States at its highest in 45 years (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Income level and mean net worth of middle-class households has been steadily declining since 2000 (Smith, 2012; U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). For such households who may have relatively more resources upon which to rely, income instability could deplete savings and thereby increase the risk of falling into poverty. Any resulting lapse in poverty could be challenging and difficult to escape subsequently (Acs & Zimmerman, 2008; Gosselin, 2004a).This study describes the experiences of income instability for low- and middle-income households with children over a period of nearly 3 years and informs the following questions: Does intrayear household income statistically significantly vary over an extended period? If so, are there distinct patterns of income instability experienced by households? Finally, what household characteristics are associated with these distinct patterns of income instability?Income Instability and Household Well-BeingIt is well established that household economic resources influence children's outcomes across developmental domains. Income instability, like income level, may increase economic hardship and parental stress (Conger,Ge, Elder,Lorenz,& Simons, 1994), disrupt parent-child interactions (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), and reduce parents' ability to invest consistently in their children (Becker & Tomes, 1986). Instability could be more or less detrimental depending on overall income level, the trend of income over time, and the events leading to income changes (see Hill, Morris, Gennetian, Wolf, & Tubbs, 2013, for a theoretical overview). …

Local governments have limited opportunities and powers for management of the tax income while the non-tax income directly is in their zone of competence. The main directions of management of the non-tax income are: rent payments from use of objects of municipal property, introduction of new types of payments, economic regulation of activity of the municipal unitary enterprises and establishments, sanctions and measures of claim work. Municipalities have a set of ways of increase in receipts of the income in own budgets, thus the volume of expenses for creation of system of ensuring mobilization of the non-tax income doesn’t exceed 10-15% of a gain of profitable base on them.

Employing the life satisfaction approach to value physical health, this paper illustrates the use of a subset of windfall income (restricted windfall income) as a substitute for the more conventional household income monetary measure. Results provide no evidence against the exogeneity of restricted windfall income and indicate that the causal effect of income on life satisfaction is substantially higher (and willingness-to-pay estimates substantially lower) when restricted windfall income is used. Further research should be devoted to looking into the presence and size of measurement errors in restricted windfall income. If this bias is large, then the quest for valid and strong instruments will continue.

This study explored changes in net disposable income for low-income single-mother families before and after the 1996 welfare reform in the USA. Although many studies on welfare reform have focused on employment or total family income as a way to measure low-income single-mother families’ economic well-being, little is known about their net income after expenses related to entering the workforce. This study analyzed net disposable income after tax deductions and childcare costs to provide a more accurate understanding of income changes using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the US Census Bureau. The results revealed that while low-income single mothers were working more after welfare reform, their net disposable income decreased during this time because their earnings were low and offset by an increase in childcare costs and a decline in means-tested benefits, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits. Key Practitioner Message: ● To understand effects of the 1996 welfare reform on low-income families’ economic well-being; ● To understand comprehensive income sources and work related expenses of low-income families; ● To provide policy suggestions for comprehensive childcare subsidies to support low-income single mothers’ employment.

Journal of Agricultural Economics, 65 (3), ISSN:0021-857X, ISSN:1477-9552

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the income strategies adopted by rural households in Ghana and analyzes the determinants of households’ choice of income portfolio.Design/methodology/approach– A multinomial logit approach is employed by the paper to investigate the determinants of various income strategies adopted by households in rural Ghana.Findings– Results indicate that household characteristics, location and infrastructure all play a role in explaining the adoption of income strategies other than a purely on-farm strategy by households. Education is a key determinant of income strategies involving non-farm wage employment, while access to credit and electricity play important roles in non-farm self-employment income strategies.Practical implications– The findings of the paper call for a promotion of off-farm income opportunities to complement farm incomes and to enhance access of rural households to these sources of income.Originality/value– The paper models rural household income portfolios into mutually exclusive categories which enables the application of the multinomial logit approach. The paper deviates from mainstream rural income diversification literature that has focussed on assessing the determinants of income shares.

This exploratory study compares the entrepreneurial tendency and family income across religious denominations in the United States. Information from the General Social Survey (GSS) database on self-employed and a matched sample of those employed by others is used to compare the family income and incidence of entrepreneurship by religion. We show that Protestants are more likely to be self-employed than Catholics, although both are less likely than those that are not religious or Jews. Religious affiliation has a mixed result on income, although increased attendance at religious services increases income for those employed by others.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijssm.v1i1.8641 Int. J. Soc. Sci. Manage. Vol.1(1) 2014 3-9

In the wake of China’s enormous success transitioning to a market economy there is a widely held belief among researchers and policymakers that the country’s income distribution has become excessively unfair. Previous authors have argued ‘the perception of inequality is one of the key elements of the attitudes toward reforms’. We hypothesize that reform ‘winners’ (educated, high income, higher ranking Party officials) will express less dissatisfaction with the current income distribution and reform ‘losers’ (less educated, lower income, lower ranking Party members) will express greater dissatisfaction with the current income distribution. To test this hypothesis we use two unique data sets, the 2002 Chinese Household Income Project and the World Values Survey. We find that the perception of unfairness is highly correlated with actual or perceived income, current prospects, attitude toward corruption, and status of Party membership.

The relationship between the public health status and income inequality has been taken into consideration in the last two decades. One of the important questions in this regard is that whether the changes in income inequality will lead to changes in health indicators or not. To answer this question, life expectancy is used as a health indicator and the Gini coefficient is used as an income inequality indicator. In this study, the relationship between income inequality and the public health has been investigated by panel data in Eviews software during 2000–2011 in 65 low-and middle-income countries. By using panel data and considering fixed effects and heterogeneity of sections, the relationship between income inequality and public health status is a significant negative relationship.

The issues preceding the process of company valuation via income valuation methods are explored in this paper. Income valuation methods are applicable only if particular requirements are fulfilled. The fulfilment of some of these requirements can be verified by the application of two selected variables: the value spread and the net income. The aim in this paper is to examine the dependence between these two variables in Czech agricultural companies using the chi-square test of independence. Based on empirical tests, it is proved that there is slightly positive dependence between these variables and that the value spread and net income are appropriate for the identification of suitable companies for the application of income valuation methods.

This paper analyzes determinants of ex-manufacturer prices for originator and generic drugs across countries. We focus on drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria in middle and low-income countries (MLICs), with robustness checks to other therapeutic categories and the full income range of countries. We examine the effects of per capita income, income dispersion, competition from originator and generic substitutes, and whether the drugs are sold to retail pharmacies versus tendered procurement by non-government organizations. The cross-national income elasticity of prices is 0.27 across the full income range of countries but is 0.0–0.10 between MLICs, implying that drugs are least affordable relative to income in the lowest income countries. Within-country income inequality contributes to relatively high prices in MLICs. Although generics are priced roughly 30% lower than originators on average, the variance is large. Additional generic competitors only weakly affect prices, plausibly because generic quality uncertainty leads to competition on brand rather than price. Tendered procurement that imposes quality standards attracts multinational generic suppliers and significantly reduces prices of originator and generic drugs, compared with their respective prices to retail pharmacies. ©2013 The Authors. Health Economics Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Using the 1989 and 2009 China Health and Nutrition Surveys, this paper examines the effects of social welfare programmes on poverty and income inequality in China in 1989 and 2009. The findings indicate that social welfare programmes have played an important role in poverty reduction, reducing poverty rates by approximately 32%. The effects on income inequality, however, were reversed. For example, the ratio of top to bottom income quintiles grew after government transfers, suggesting that the programmes benefitted higher income families more than their counterparts. The inequalities among regions and income quintiles also increased over time.

Although millions of households in the world depend on rice cultivation for income and employment, volatility in rice income and negative income shocks caused by crop failure stem from natural disasters, an almost regular phenomenon in rice farming in Asia and Africa. Income volatility may force households in developing countries to lower their expenditures on health and education, as the literature suggests. A drastic reduction in education and health expenditures due to negative income shocks can affect children’s health and education, and hence human capital formation in the long run, in developing countries. Using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) data from the government of Bangladesh and applying the “difference-in-difference” estimation method in a natural experimental setting, this article reveals that in the face of a loss in income caused by a tropical cyclone that hit the coastal region in May 2009, cyclone-affected rice farmers spent less on their children’s education. This study suggests active intervention to ensure stable income to make schooling expenditures less elastic with rice income to ensure human capital development in agriculture-dependent countries in the long run.

As a policy evaluation research, this study investigates the relationship between income transfers and the income security of the poor in Korea. Employing Beckerman's poverty reduction effect model, this study examines the impact of social and private income transfers on poverty rate and poverty gap reduction. Particularly, this study compares poverty reduction dynamic between working poor and non-working poor. This study analyzes a representative panel data, Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS). Results reveal that income transfers show a relatively higher poverty reduction among the non-working poor than the working poor, indicating that both social and private income transfers have been concentra ted on the non-work ing poor. However, t he difference in the poverty reduction effectiveness of income transfers between the non-work ing poor a nd the working poor has decreased over time. The result also indicates private income transfers play more important role than public income transfers in Korean society.

The purpose of this empirical research from Uganda is to provide initial insight into the ‘black box’ of understanding the economic behaviour of persons with disabilities and about their use of microfinance services. First, we analyse the income levels of persons with disabilities in relation to their sources of income. Second, we study the income sources and income levels for different types of disabilities. Finally, we analyse how income level and income source relate to the use of microfinance services for persons with disabilities. We present evidence that farmers with disabilities and persons with visual impairments have lower income levels than other persons with disabilities. We then document that those with the lowest income levels have the least access to microfinance services, in particular services from formal institutions. Moreover, respondents involved in farming and manufacturing have less access to formal microfinance services than those involved in retail/wholesale or service activities.

The study has investigated the growth in income of rural households in Bangladesh with a view to analysing distributional consequences in the post-liberalisation era. Using data from secondary sources, it has applied a quintile-growth approach by dividing each group of households into five income clusters (quintiles) to analyse the incidence of growth in real income. It has found that although all groups of rural households experienced a moderate to high increase in real income, non-farm households experienced a larger increase than farm households due to a large reduction in consumer price. Farm households gained from the increase in productivity but experienced losses from producer price reduction. The two opposite forces – increase in productivity and reduction in producer price – offset the effects of each other, thereby affecting the income growth of farm households. Amongst the farm households, large and medium farmers gained the most and small farmers gained the least from the growth in real income, indicating that rich households experienced a much higher increase in real income than poor households – thereby adversely affecting the distribution of income and widening the income gap between rich and poor households. These findings demonstrated that while agricultural trade liberalisation benefited rural households generally, the benefits were not distributed equally and in fact, inequality increased amongst rural households. This study argues that the growth in real income of rural household was not pro-poor during 1985- 86 to 2005. This study suggests that agricultural trade liberalisation contributed to higher growth in the rural economy but it contributed to greater inequality in income distribution amongst the rich and poor income groups (quintiles). Government should reduce inequality through policy interventions with income transfer from the rich to the poor.

This paper tries to investigate the role of non-wage income in explaining the income inequality in urban China. Our findings show that the contribution of income sources to inequality is different between the provinces with different extents of inequality. We find that in the coastal provinces, the contribution of wage income to inequality is decreasing, while the contribution of business and property income is increasing and getting more important; in contrast, in the western provinces, the role of wage income is larger than the other provinces, while the role of business and property income is smaller and remains unchanged. Our empirical results also suggest that the provinces with higher share of business and property income have high income inequality.

We study how financial and educational institutions affect the evolution of income and income inequality in an overlapping generations model with heterogenous agents. While the literature mostly focuses on either physical or human capital, we make an attempt to study the joint evolution of these variables. In our model, we find that better educational institutions increase income of the individuals and are associated with lower income inequality. Better financial institutions also foster economic growth, but are associated with higher income inequality. Our model also demonstrates that focusing on aggregate measures of financial and educational institutions provides misleading results if one neglects the possibility of unequal access to these institutions.

This paper explores how trust in government shared by neighbors is associated with individual preferences for income redistribution and individual perceptions regarding income tax burden. Using individual-level data from Japan, a nation with shared homogenous racial and cultural backgrounds, this paper controls for unobservable heterogeneity among Japan’s population, thus reducing estimation bias. Three measures for trust in government are used: “trust in ministries and government agencies”, “trust in diet members”, and “trust in members of municipal councils”. After controlling for individual characteristics, the key findings are: (1) people are more likely to express preferences for income redistribution when trust in government in their residential area is high; (2) people are more likely to perceive their tax burden as low when trust in government in their residential area is high; and (3) when the sample is divided into people with above average income and those with below average income, these results are only clearly observed for people with above average income and not those with below average income.

This paper simulates how a doubling of food prices affects absolute poverty and the food-price-adjusted real income distribution. We assume unsubsidized world food prices in order to derive the cost of poverty deepening and poverty expansion. We also estimate the degree to which inequality increases if no measures are put in place to offset rising food prices. Both measures are vulnerability indicators useful for social policy planning. Our results show that low-income countries experience dramatic increases in absolute poverty as a result of doubling food prices. Middle-income countries experience the greatest decrease in absolute income, which contributes most to an increase in world income inequality. The paper estimates that the global dollar value of the absolute poverty gap ($1.25/day) has the potential to increase by 400%, with poverty deepening accounting for two thirds of the increase.

We address personal financial satisfaction from an intra-household perspective. Our purpose is twofold. First, we seek to contrast the procedural utility hypothesis, whereby different sources of income may contribute differentially to personal income satisfaction. In particular, we compare labour earnings and non-labour income. Second, we set out to test the hypothesis of relative income within the household. Does the income level of one individual regarding other members of the same household matter in personal income satisfaction? These two hypotheses are relevant to policy-making regarding subsidies, taxation and active labour market programmes. We use data for Spain and Denmark in the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). In general terms, and for both countries, our results seem to confirm both the procedural hypothesis and the relative income hypothesis. Labour income contributes more to individual financial satisfaction than non-labour income for both household partners (men and women) in the two countries. However, the effect of an individual’s own share of labour income relative to the partner’s differs considerably both between men and woman and between the two countries.

This study examines the relationship between income and subjective well-being among rural-to-urban migrant workers in China. Our analysis of a recent survey uncovered a U-shaped relationship between income and overall life satisfaction for migrant workers in Shanghai. Furthermore, the positive correlation is curvilinear, showing that increasing income yields diminishing returns. Drawing upon ethnographic literature concerning migrant workers, we suggest several possible explanations. For the poorest migrant workers, small increases in income are correlated with longer working hours and increased social comparison with their urban neighbors. After migrant workers’ income reaches a certain level, however, they are able to save money, giving them hope for future social mobility. Furthermore, migrant workers with disposable income can purchase status symbols, helping them to partially overcome their stigmatized status. The positive effect of income on life satisfaction eventually reaches a plateau, however, as even the wealthiest migrant workers find that they cannot surpass the limitations presented by their outsider identity and lack of an urban residence permit. Other findings include a negative relationship between income and income satisfaction and a positive relationship between education and income satisfaction. We conclude that the unique context surrounding Chinese migrant workers alters the typical effects of certain factors upon well-being and satisfaction.