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Full-Text Articles in Income Distribution
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 …
Poverty Changes In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields
Poverty Changes In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] This chapter is concerned with measuring how the extent of poverty changes in a country over time. 'Poverty', as the term is used here, denotes the inability of an individual or a family to command sufficient resources to satisfy basic needs. The poverty line is a constant real amount below which people are said to be poor. The extent of poverty in a country is then based on variables such as the number who are poor and the extent of their resource shortfall. This chapter treats three topics: how poverty is defined, how much poverty there is, and how …
Trade Strategies And The Poor: Adjusting To New Realities, Gary S. Fields
Trade Strategies And The Poor: Adjusting To New Realities, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] The major policy issue examined in this paper is that of a country's choice of a trade strategy in the context of helping the poor. As the end of the 1980s approaches, developing countries face a much more difficult economic situation than that which they confronted at the end of the 1970s. The paper begins by reviewing these new realities and the need for adjusting to them. After mentioning some non-policies, I proceed to consider both successful and unsuccessful country experiences and draw lessons from them. One policy singled out for special attention is wage policy and its interaction …
Taiwan’S Changing Employment And Earnings Structure, Gary S. Fields
Taiwan’S Changing Employment And Earnings Structure, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] In its determined pursuit of economic development throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, Taiwan consistently succeeded in achieving growth rates that were amongst the highest in the world; however, in tandem with such growth, a number of significant changes also took place in the island's labour market. This chapter begins by highlighting some of the most important of these aggregate changes, as follows: (i) the achievement, and subsequent maintenance of, essentially full employment; (ii) improvements in the overall mix of jobs, in particular, a steady reduction in the share of agricultural employment to total employment, a very …
Economic And Demographic Aspects Of Taiwan's Rising Family Income Inequality, Gary S. Fields
Economic And Demographic Aspects Of Taiwan's Rising Family Income Inequality, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] Since 1980, however, family income inequality in Taiwan has risen slowly but steadily. In this chapter, we apply decomposition methodologies devised by Fei and co-authors and by Shorrocks to Taiwan's Family Income and Expenditure Surveys to quantify the sources of Taiwan's rising family income inequality. Our principal finding is that labor income inequality accounts for more than 100 percent of the observed change— that is, household income inequality would have increased even more had not business income, property income and transfer income contributed to an equalization of incomes. However, the reason for this is not that individual earnings became …
Education And Taiwan’S Changing Employment And Earnings Structure, Gary S. Fields, Amanda Newton Kraus
Education And Taiwan’S Changing Employment And Earnings Structure, Gary S. Fields, Amanda Newton Kraus
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] Between 1980 and 1992, the enormous changes in economic development in Taiwan had significant impacts on the island's labour market. Examples of these changes include the island's almost legendary and meteoric economic growth, the maintenance of essentially full employment, an increase of around 116 per cent in real labour earnings, considerable upgrading of the educational qualifications of the labour force as a whole, a sustained and systematic shift in the composition of the labour force from agriculture into manufacturing and services and occupational upgrading (defined as the expansion of the share of the labour force in the better occupations, …
Employment Generation And Poverty Alleviation In Developing Economies, Gary S. Fields
Employment Generation And Poverty Alleviation In Developing Economies, Gary S. Fields
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] We know well that the East Asian economies have achieved higher economic growth rates than those in any other region of the world and that production for world markets has featured as a hallmark of the East Asian successes. This paper has three purposes: first, to present comparative data showing that the rates at which employment opportunities improve and poverty is reduced mirror countries' differential growth experiences; second, to examine differences in labour market institutions, demonstrating that those in East Asia have similarities more likely to lead to higher output performance and shared improvements in living conditions; and third, …
Long-Term Economic Mobility And The Private Sector In Developing Countries: New Evidence, Gary S. Fields, Walter S. Bagg
Long-Term Economic Mobility And The Private Sector In Developing Countries: New Evidence, Gary S. Fields, Walter S. Bagg
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] Consistent with the mainstream view of economic growth as a factor promoting long-term economic mobility, we hypothesize that those economies in which economic growth has been most rapid are precisely the ones that have achieved the greatest progress toward poverty reduction through improved labor market conditions, especially in private employment. We also hypothesize that the positive relationship running from economic growth through the labor market to poverty reduction continued to hold in the 1990s in essentially the same way as in earlier years when globalization was less intense. Both hypotheses are confirmed by our data. Our results therefore cast …
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 …
Escaping From Poverty: Household Income Dynamics In Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, And Venezuela, Gary S. Fields, Paul L. Cichello, Samuel Freije, Marta Menéndez, David Newhouse
Escaping From Poverty: Household Income Dynamics In Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, And Venezuela, Gary S. Fields, Paul L. Cichello, Samuel Freije, Marta Menéndez, David Newhouse
Gary S Fields
[Excerpt] This study presents the main results of a larger, more technical report (Fields and others 2001) and subsequent work (Fields and others 2002) that analyzes income mobility in Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, and Venezuela. These economies were selected on the basis of the availability of panel data with which to analyze household income dynamics in the 1990s. By following households over time, we are able to investigate how households that were poor initially fared economically, relative to their richer counterparts. We can learn more about how and why households exit—and enter—poverty. To gauge income mobility, this study centers on …