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Full-Text Articles in Income Distribution
Earnings Mobility In Times Of Growth And Decline: Argentina From 1996 To 2003, Gary S. Fields, María Laura Sánchez Puerta
Earnings Mobility In Times Of Growth And Decline: Argentina From 1996 To 2003, Gary S. Fields, María Laura Sánchez Puerta
Gary S Fields
In recent years, the economy of Argentina has experienced both rapid economic growth and severe economic decline. In this paper, we use a series of one-year long panels to study who gained the most in pesos when the economy grew and who lost the most in pesos when the economy contracted. Various considerations led us to expect that mobility would be divergent—that is, that the individuals who started with the highest initial earnings would enjoy the largest earnings gains in pesos. Contrary to expectations and for a wide range of specifications, mobility is found to be mostly convergent, sometimes neutral, …
Regional Inequality And Other Sources Of Income Variation In Colombia, Gary S. Fields, T. Paul Schultz
Regional Inequality And Other Sources Of Income Variation In Colombia, Gary S. Fields, T. Paul Schultz
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] Regional inequality is of interest for a variety of reasons: planning development policies aimed at alleviating poverty and reducing personal inequality, gauging the degree of a country's labor market integration, understanding patterns of population movement in general and labor force migration in particular, predicting future urbanization, and characterizing the poor. Policymakers often aim development programs at particular target groups such as those living in certain regions of a country. In this paper we analyze the determinants of incomes and income inequality in one less developed country, Colombia, examining both personal and regional aspects. The results help clarify the potential …
Employment In Low-Income Countries: Beyond Labor Market Segmentation?, Gary S. Fields
Employment In Low-Income Countries: Beyond Labor Market Segmentation?, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] Throughout the world, there are fundamentally two, and only two, ways that people can escape from poverty. One is by earning their way out of poverty. The other is by receiving socially-provided goods and services that lift them out of poverty. Even with multilateral and bilateral assistance, low-income countries are too poor to be able to make a significant dent in poverty by the social services route alone. This means that creating more and better earning opportunities for the poor is the only other option available. In policy discussions, two mistakes are often made. One is to assume that …
Household Income Dynamics: A Four Country Story, Gary S. Fields, Paul L. Cichello, Samuel Freije, Marta Menéndez, David Newhouse
Household Income Dynamics: A Four Country Story, Gary S. Fields, Paul L. Cichello, Samuel Freije, Marta Menéndez, David Newhouse
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] In this paper, we analyse the dynamics of household per capita incomes using longitudinal data from Indonesia, South Africa, Spain and Venezuela. We find that in all four countries reported initial income and job changes of the head are consistently the most important variables in accounting for income changes, overall and for initially poor households. We also find that changes in income are more important than changes in household size and that changes in labour earnings are more important than changes in other sources of household income.