Economics Commons^™

Income Inequality In U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Which Areas Have The Greatest Inequality And Why?, C. Peterson Compton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, much focus has been placed on the high and growing level of income inequality in the United States. This composition begins to fill a void in the existing literature by examining specific urban areas that have particularly high levels of inequality and the characteristics that factor into inequality. In this paper, I construct a qualitative model for a particularly unequal metropolitan area. I then apply the model to a set of U.S. metros that are among the most unequal in the country and share a particular set of characteristics consistent with the model.

Dynamic Poverty Decomposition Analysis: An Application To The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we propose a new method of poverty decomposition. Our method remedies the shortcomings of existing methods and has some desirable properties such as time-reversion consistency and subperiod additivity. It integrates the existing methods of growth-redistribution decomposition and sector-based decomposition, because it allows us to decompose poverty change into growth and redistribution components for each group (e.g. regions or sectors) in the economy. We extend our method to have six components and provide an empirical application to the Philippines for the period 1985-2009.

Resolving America's Human Capital Paradox: A Jobs Compact For The Future, Thomas A. Kochan

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

It is widely recognized that human capital is essential to sustaining a competitive economy at high and rising living standards. Yet acceptance of persistent high unemployment, stagnant wages, and other indicators of declining job quality suggests that policymakers and employers undervalue human capital. This paper traces the root cause of this apparent paradox to the primacy afforded shareholder value over human resource considerations in American firms and the longstanding gridlock over employment policy. I suggest that a new jobs compact will be needed to close the deficit in jobs lost in the recent recession and to achieve sustained real wage …

America's Human Capital Paradox, Thomas A. Kochan

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

It is widely recognized that human capital is essential to sustaining a competitive economy at high and rising living standards. Yet acceptance of persistent high unemployment, stagnant wages, and other indicators of declining job quality suggests that policymakers and employers undervalue human capital. This paper traces the root cause of this apparent paradox to the primacy afforded shareholder value over human resource considerations in American firms and the longstanding gridlock over employment policy. I suggest that a new jobs compact will be needed to close the deficit in jobs lost in the recent recession and to achieve sustained real wage …

Micro-Finance Competition With Motivated Mfis, Brishti Guha, Prabal Roy Chowdhury

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we examine the effect of increased MFI competition, focusing on its implications for borrower targeting, both in the presence and the absence of double-dipping. In the absence of competition we find that the loans are more likely to go to relatively richer borrowers whenever inequality is not too large, and the technology is sufficiently convex. In the presence of competition, the results depend on whether double-dipping is feasible or not. In case double-dipping is not feasible, we find that the MFIs necessarily target the richer borrowers. Interestingly, it turns out that double-dipping may encourage the MFIs to …

Mountains Of Injustice : Social And Environmental Justice In Appalachia, Michele Morrone, Geoffrey L. Buckley

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Research in environmental justice reveals that low-income and minority neighborhoods in our nation’s cities are often the preferred sites for landfills, power plants, and polluting factories. Those who live in these sacrifice zones are forced to shoulder the burden of harmful environmental effects so that others can prosper. Mountains of Injustice broadens the discussion from the city to the country by focusing on the legacy of disproportionate environmental health impacts on communities in the Appalachian region, where the costs of cheap energy and cheap goods are actually quite high.

Through compelling stories and interviews with people who are fighting for …

Recent Developments In Antipoverty Policies In The United States, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

I survey recent developments in antipoverty policy in the United States over the past decade and examine how the safety net and tax system affects poverty and its correlates using data from the 2000 to 2010 waves of the Current Population Survey-Annual Social and Economic Supplement. Unlike the 1980s and 1990s, and until the health care overhaul in 2009, the first decade of the 21st Century was relatively tepid in terms of major transfer policy reforms. However, real spending on most major social program increased significantly, and in some cases doubled or tripled, in response to demographic shifts and the …

Social Interactions In The Labor Market, Andrew Grodner, Thomas J. Kniesner, John A. Bishop

Center for Policy Research

We examine theoretically and empirically social interactions in labor markets and how policy prescriptions can change dramatically when there are social interactions present.

Spillover effects increase labor supply and conformity effects make labor supply perfectly inelastic at a reference group average. The demand for a good may also be influenced by either a spillover effect or a conformity effect. Positive spillover increases the demand for the good with interactions, and a conformity effect makes the demand curve pivot to become less price sensitive. Similar social interactions effects appear in the associated derived demands for labor.

Individual and community factors may …

Economic Writing On The Pressing Problems Of The Day: The Roles Of Moral Intuition And Methodological Confusion, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

Economists are often called on to help address pressing problems of the day, yet many economists are uncomfortable about disclosing the values that they bring to this work. This essay explores how an inadequate understanding of the role of methodology, as related to ethics and human emotions of concern, underlies this reluctance and compromises the quality of economic advice. The tension between caring about the problems, on the one hand, and writing within the existing culture of the discipline, on the other, are illustrated with examples from U.S. policymaking, behavioral economics, and the economics of climate change and global poverty. …

(Wp 2010-06) How Do Structural And Policy Factors Affect A Country’S Probability To Achieve The Most (Or The Least) Favorable Growth Path?, Fabrizio Carmignani, Abdur Chowdhury

Economics Working Papers

We ask which economic policies can help a country create the most favourable conditions for development. We observe that the dynamics of several development indicators can be grouped into four clusters, each cluster corresponding to a different combination of growth and changes in inequality. Based on this observation, we define four different development scenarios and use limited dependent variable regressions to study how structural and policy factors affect a country’s probability to achieve the most (or the least) favourable of these scenarios. Our results point to a comforting picture: through the choice of appropriate policies countries can effectively increase their …

Poverty, Inequality And Cost Of Living Differences, Enrico Moretti

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Metropolitan areas in the US are characterized by enormous differences in average income, earnings, and factor productivity. The income of individuals located in metropolitan areas at the top of the income distribution is more than double the income of observationally similar individuals located in metropolitan areas at the bottom of the distribution. These differences reflect, at least in part, variation in local productivity.

Notes On Poverty Traps And Appalachia, Steven Durlauf

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

In these notes, I provide some general ideas on how to conceptualize poverty traps and speculate on their applicability to understanding Appalachian poverty. My goal is to stimulate thinking on Appalachia that exploits contemporary perspectives in economics on the sources of persistent poverty and inequality. To do this, I focus on both the theory of poverty traps as well as issues in the econometric assessment of their empirical salience.

Multiethnic Labor Markets And Socioeconomic Mobility : A Career Trajectory Perspective, Jeremy F. Pais

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the United States, high rates of immigration have once again raised important questions concerning the effect of ethnic diversity on patterns of socioeconomic mobility and levels of inequality between racial and ethnic groups. However, despite the potential effect of immigration and ethnic diversity on racial and ethnic stratification within multiethnic societies, research has yet to provide an examination of the impact of these factors on patterns of social mobility over the life course. While prior research focuses extensively on metropolitan area characteristics related to contemporaneous race and ethnic labor market disparities, the primary contribution of this research is to …

Globalization And International Development: Critical Issues Of The 21st Century, Sisay Asefa Editor

Upjohn Press

These papers address globalization issues with a special emphasis on its impact on poverty. Advances in transportation and telecommunications with instantaneous information and communication flows requires new approaches given the wide differences in cultures, political systems, languages, and ethnicities. Extreme variation in the international distributions of wealth, income, and poverty remain as enormous social problems to be addressed. In general, the contributors recommend expanding the flows between countries to accelerate growth and reduce inequalities. These flows include international trade and capital, migration, remittances, and foreign aid. But in addition to these hard commodities and dollars, there are flows of ideas, …

Domestication Alone Does Not Lead To Inequality: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission Among Horticulturalists, Michael Gurven, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L. Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric Schniter, Christopher Von Rueden, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

We present empirical measures of wealth inequality and its intergenerational transmission among four horticulturalist populations. Wealth is construed broadly as embodied somatic and neural capital, including body size, fertility and cultural knowledge, material capital such as land and household wealth, and relational capital in the form of coalitional support and field labor. Wealth inequality is moderate for most forms of wealth, and intergenerational wealth transmission is low for material resources and moderate for embodied and relational wealth. Our analysis suggests that domestication alone does not transform social structure; rather, the presence of scarce, defensible resources may be required before inequality …

Strategies For Improving Economic Mobility Of Workers: Bridging Research And Practice, Maude Toussaint-Comeau Editor, Bruce D. Meyer Editor

Upjohn Press

The contributors to this book provide a provocative assessment of the effectiveness of various policies and practices designed to help disadvantaged segments of our population overcome the obstacles in their path to upward economic mobility.

Inequality And Human Capital In Appalachia: 1960-2000, Dan Black, Seth Sanders

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper examines changes in the earnings distribution of men age 25-64 between 1960 and 2000 in Appalachia and in the remainder of the U.S. Because Appalachia is more rural than the remainder of the U.S. we also examine changes in the earnings distribution in rural vs. urban areas. Our central finding is that there have been large differences in the evolution of the earnings distribution in rural vs. urban areas and this is the principal reason that Appalachia’s earnings distribution differs to some degree from the remainder of the U.S. We find that the bottom of the earnings distribution …

2009-1 The Level And Distribution Of Global Household Wealth, James B. Davies, Susanna Sandström, Anthony Shorrocks, Edward N. Wolff

Economic Policy Research Institute. EPRI Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Ketimpangan Antardaerah, Desentralisasi Dan Eksistensi Korupsi Di Indonesia, I Wayan Sukadana

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

Decentralization has been implemented for eight years. However, corruption has not been lessened yet within the decentralization era. Bad regulations and investment climate are suspected to be a cause of the situations. Good regulation and investment climate appear if the interjurisdictional competitions exist. The incentive for competition is the equality of economic endowment among regions, or each region has their own tradeable "technology" that comparable to others. Inequality in "technology" implies that the region with rich "technology" is more attractive eventhough there are bad regulation and the investment climate. In contrary, in region with less "technology", corruption will appear because …

Keeping Dictators Honest: The Role Of Population, Quoc-Anh Do, Filipe R. Campante

Research Collection School Of Economics

In order to explain the apparently paradoxical presence of acceptable governance in many non-democratic regimes, economists and political scientists have focused mostly on institutions acting as de facto checks and balances. In this paper, we propose that population plays a similar role in guaranteeing the quality of governance and redistribution. We argue and demonstrate with historical evidence that the concentration of population around the policy making center serves as an insurgency threat to a dictatorship, inducing it to yield to more redistribution and better governance. We bring this centered concept of population concentration to the data through the Centered Index …

Changes In The Distribution Of Income Among Single Mother Families: Murphy Brown Meets Inequality, Christopher Bollinger, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We document the demographic and economic forces underlying changes in income inequality among single mother families over the past three decades in the United States. Using decomposable measures of after-tax income-to-needs inequality, we examine within- and between-group inequality based on education attainment, age, past marital status, race, and employment status. We also conduct income factor decompositions to quantify the relative contributions of earnings, transfers, other income, and taxes to inequality. Our results from the March Current Population Survey show that income-to-needs inequality rose nearly 30 percent between 1979 and 2005. The demographic decompositions indicate that most of the change in …

Strategies For Improving Economic Mobility Of Workers, Maude Toussaint-Comeau

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Persistent Problem: Inequality, Difference, And The Challenge Of Development, Aseema Sinha, John Echeverri-Gent, Leslie Elliott Armijo, Marc Blecher, Daniel Brumberg, Valerie Bunce, Kiren A. Chaudhry, John W. Harbeson, Evelyne Huber, Bronwyn Leebaw, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Loren Ryter, Susan L. Woodward

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

This report highlights the complex, multidimensional nature of inequality in the era of globalization. It documents that despite the impressive strides by nations like China and India, absolute inequality between the richest and poorest countries is greater than ever before in history. It demonstrates that the rise of China and India creates a new dimension to the persistent problem of inequality.

Building Equitable Communities: A New Role For City Hall, Kiran Cunningham, Hannah J. Mckinney

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

2008-6 Non-Agricultural Employment Determinants And Income Inequality Decomposition, Xiaoyun Liu, Terry Sicular

Economic Policy Research Institute. EPRI Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Economic Reforms And Total Factor Productivity Growth In Pakistan: An Empirical Analysis, Muhammad Sabir, Qazi Masood Ahmed

Business Review

This paper compares the average growth rates in GDP, factor inputs and total factor productivity during pre-reform period 1972-73 to 1987-88 and the reform period 1987-88 to 2001-02 and summarizes the historical patterns. Particular attention is given to assessing the impact of structural adjustment policies on total productivity growth directly and indirectly through other determinants of total factor productivity growth, such as human capital etc.

Spatial Inequality In Chile, Claudio A. Agostini, Philip H. Brown

Working Papers in Economics

Despite success in reducing poverty over the last twenty years, inequality in Chile has remained virtually unchanged, making Chile one of the least equal countries in the world. High levels of inequality have been shown to hamper further reductions in poverty as well as economic growth and local inequality has been shown to affect such outcomes as violence and health. The study of inequality at the local level is thus crucial for understanding the economic well-being of a country. Local measures of inequality have been difficult to obtain, but recent theoretical advances have enabled the combination of survey and census …

2007-5 Estimating The Level And Distribution Of Global Household Wealth, James B. Davies, Susanna Sandström, Anthony Shorrocks, Edward N. Wolff

Economic Policy Research Institute. EPRI Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Estimating Guard Labor, Arjun Jayadev

Economics Faculty Publication Series

As a background paper to Jayadev and Bowles (2006), this paper provides details on our measure of guard labor as we measure these in labor units. Data from the United States indicate a significant increase in its extent in the U.S. over the period 1890 to the present. Cross-national comparisons show a significant statistical association between income inequality and the fraction of the labor force that is constituted by guard labor, as well as with measures of political legitimacy (inversely) and political conflict.

Income Inequality And The Probability Of Violent Revolt, Noah Cecil

Honors Papers

This paper examines the effect of income inequality on the impetus of an organized dissident group to initiate a "revolt" in an attempt to wrest power from the government regionally or countrywide. After suggesting alterations and extensions of a mathematical framework developed by Blomberg, Hess, and Weerapana (2004) income inequality, economic growth, urbanization, and political rights data from 102 countries from 1972-1999 are used to determine their respective influences on the likelihood of a revolt being initiated in a given year. Income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient is found to be statistically significant in determining the likelihood of …