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Income Distribution Commons

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2011

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Full-Text Articles in Income Distribution

Assessing Progress Toward Greater Equality Of Income Distribution, Gary S. Fields Nov 2011

Assessing Progress Toward Greater Equality Of Income Distribution, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Income distribution is only one indicator of economic well-being useful in gauging improvements in the economic position of the poor; change in income distribution, appropriately conceived and measured, is as good a criterion as any for assessing progress toward the alleviation of poverty. Income is intimately bound up with a family's command over economic resources. Rising modern-sector employment or reduced infant mortality might be suggestive of improvements in the economic position of the poor; gains in real income among low-income groups provide direct evidence that poverty is being alleviated. This chapter answers the following questions: What are the strengths …


Impact Of Food Inflation On Poverty In The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii Nov 2011

Impact Of Food Inflation On Poverty In The Philippines, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We simulate the impact of actual food price increase between June 2006 and June 2008 on poverty across different areas and whether the household’s main income source is agricultural activities. We explicitly treat heterogeneity in food price changes and the patterns of consumption and production by merging a expenditure survey dataset and a price dataset at the provincial level or lower. While the increase of head count index is larger for non-agricultural households than agricultural households, the opposite is true for the poverty gap and poverty severity measures, because poor agricultural households are particularly vulnerable to food inflation.


Regional Inequality And Other Sources Of Income Variation In Colombia, Gary S. Fields, T. Paul Schultz Oct 2011

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 Oct 2011

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 …


Poverty Measures And Anti-Poverty Policy, Francois Bourguignon, Gary S. Fields Oct 2011

Poverty Measures And Anti-Poverty Policy, Francois Bourguignon, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Amartya Sen has made fundamental contributions to the study of distributional aspects of economic growth and decline. Among his pathbreaking works are his lectures on the economics of inequality (Sen, 1973), his article on the axiomatics of poverty measurement (Sen, 1976), and his book on anti-poverty policy in the context of famines (Sen, 1981). This paper is concerned with one of these areas, namely, the measurement of poverty and the implications for anti-poverty policy. In the 1960's and 1970's those who were working in the poverty field held a number of somewhat incompletely articulated views as to the extent …


Trade Strategies And The Poor: Adjusting To New Realities, Gary S. Fields Oct 2011

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 …


When It Comes To Poverty Reduction, Less May Be More, Singapore Management University Oct 2011

When It Comes To Poverty Reduction, Less May Be More, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

It is a widely accepted belief that people should be better off as the economy expands: The greater the growth, the greater the likelihood that poverty numbers will decline. While there are many good and valid reasons to hold this to be true, exceptions exist, where the lives of the poor have improved rapidly despite slow growth, or where poverty actually increases along with strong economic growth.


Predictions For Protection: A System To Measure And Detect Asset Bubbles, Singapore Management University Oct 2011

Predictions For Protection: A System To Measure And Detect Asset Bubbles, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The damage wrecked by the bursting of asset bubbles can have a devastating impact on investors' fortunes. In the Internet bubble, some US$8 trillion of shareholder wealth was destroyed. What is even more pertinent, however, is how the popping of a bubble can create a financial crisis, impacting nations and their economies. As a result, understanding how to identify bubbles is an important first step in combating these speculative bubbles, with interested parties ranging from the academic and investment community to central bankers and policy makers.


Persistent Place-Based Income Inequality In Rural Nebraska, 1979-2009, David J. Peters Oct 2011

Persistent Place-Based Income Inequality In Rural Nebraska, 1979-2009, David J. Peters

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This article addresses a current gap in the inequality literature by identifying demographic and economic factors that best explain persistent income inequality across N = 817 non metropolitan block groups in Nebraska between 1979 and 2009. Over one-half of rural places in Nebraska have average levels of income inequality, one-quarter have persistently low inequality, and one-fifth of places have persistently high levels of income inequality. Results of multinomial logistic regression suggest that persistently high-inequality places in rural Nebraska tend to be smaller, more urbanized, more ethnically diverse, more wealthy, more specialized in high-skill and low-skill industries, and have experienced fast …


Taiwan’S Changing Employment And Earnings Structure, Gary S. Fields Sep 2011

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 Sep 2011

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 Sep 2011

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 Sep 2011

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, …


How The Mindless Growth Mantra Of Modern Economics Is Failing Us, Singapore Management University Sep 2011

How The Mindless Growth Mantra Of Modern Economics Is Failing Us, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Just three years after the 2008 global financial crisis, the world wonders, yet again, if another global downturn might be looming.


The Importance Of Region And State Welfare Rules For Disconnected Single Mothers, Andrea Hetling Sep 2011

The Importance Of Region And State Welfare Rules For Disconnected Single Mothers, Andrea Hetling

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The proportion of low-income, single mothers not receiving public assistance or participating in the formal employment sector has approximately doubled over the past decade. Many of the currently debated policy options to support these families focus on state level programs. However, little is known about the relationships between state welfare program characteristics and disconnectedness. This project assesses the effect of state welfare rules on the likelihood of being disconnected from these two income sources. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the Urban Institute‟s Welfare Rules Database, the current research compares the circumstances of these at-risk …


Recent Developments In Antipoverty Policies In The United States, James P. Ziliak Sep 2011

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 …


Long-Term Economic Mobility And The Private Sector In Developing Countries: New Evidence, Gary S. Fields, Walter S. Bagg Aug 2011

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 …


Reducing Poverty: The Overall Framework, Guy Pfeffermann, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

Reducing Poverty: The Overall Framework, Guy Pfeffermann, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] How private firms contribute to economic mobility and poverty reduction and what governments can do to enhance their contribution is the theme of this book. We look first at the positive role the private sector plays in economic development, a role that has received less emphasis that that of other players. We then focus on the labor market and how various mechanisms in the economy interact to affect conditions for people as workers and as consumers. The volume examines the links among the business environment, private sector development, economic growth, poverty reduction, and economic mobility. Until recently, development economists …


The Measurement Of Income Mobility: An Introduction To The Literature, Gary S. Fields, Efe A. Ok Aug 2011

The Measurement Of Income Mobility: An Introduction To The Literature, Gary S. Fields, Efe A. Ok

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Our main purpose in this survey is, therefore, to provide a somewhat unified setting within which the basic features of the theory of income mobility measurement can be outlined. Our aim is to provide a (subjectively) selective introduction to the literature on income mobility, and thereby shed some light on particular aspects of mobility measurement. Consequently, the present study should not be viewed as an exhaustive survey of the related literature. It is rather a very concise account of some key elements of the theory of income mobility measurement.


Employment In Low-Income Countries: Beyond Labor Market Segmentation?, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

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 Aug 2011

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 …


Do Inequality Measures Measure Inequality?, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

Do Inequality Measures Measure Inequality?, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] In the literature, much attention has been paid to a number of aspects of inequality including the distinction between relative and absolute inequality, axiomatization of inequality, the Lorenz criterion for inequality comparisons, properties of various inequality measures, and inequality decomposition. In no way do I wish to argue with the main results derived in these areas. Rather, my purpose here is to add to the theory of inequality measurement by dealing with one aspect of inequality which has been largely ignored by economists and by others. This is the question of how inequality changes - in particular, whether it …


Does Income Mobility Equalize Longer-Term Incomes? New Measures Of An Old Concept, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

Does Income Mobility Equalize Longer-Term Incomes? New Measures Of An Old Concept, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

This paper develops a new class of measures of mobility as an equalizer of longer-term incomes – a concept different from other notions such as mobility as time-independence, positional movement, share movement, income flux, and directional income movement. A number of properties are specified leading to a class of indices, one easily-implementable member of which is applied to data for the United States and France. Using this index, income mobility is found to have equalized longer-term earnings among U.S. men in the 1970s but not in the 1980s or 1990s. In France, though, income mobility was equalizing throughout, and it …


College Students And The U.S. Census, Scott L. Schaffer Aug 2011

College Students And The U.S. Census, Scott L. Schaffer

UVM Libraries Conference Day

Scott discusses college-student statistics and implications from how that data is used in the United States census.


Supply Chain Performance Of The Australian Beef Industry: Comparing The Industry Structure, Inter-Firm Relationships And Knowledge Systems Of Western Australia And Queensland, Mohammad Nasir Uddin,, Nazrul Islam, Mohammed Quaddus Aug 2011

Supply Chain Performance Of The Australian Beef Industry: Comparing The Industry Structure, Inter-Firm Relationships And Knowledge Systems Of Western Australia And Queensland, Mohammad Nasir Uddin,, Nazrul Islam, Mohammed Quaddus

Books & book chapters

The meat and livestock industry in Australia accounts for more than 45 per cent of Australia’s total value of agricultural production, within which beef is the largest industry in value terms (Nossal, Sheng and Zhao 2008). But the industry is experiencing a long-term decline in terms of trade, and has lagged behind other industries in rates of productivity improvement (MLA 2008). As it is critical for the economy that the beef industry maintains profitability and sustainability, it is believed that the performance, competitiveness and success of the industry depends on improving cost efficiency and productivity of the whole supply chain …


Earnings Volatility In America: Evidence From Matched Cps, James P. Ziliak, Bradley Hardy, Christopher Bollinger Jun 2011

Earnings Volatility In America: Evidence From Matched Cps, James P. Ziliak, Bradley Hardy, Christopher Bollinger

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We offer new evidence on earnings volatility of men and women in the United States over the past four decades by using matched data from the March Current Population Survey. We construct a measure of total volatility that encompasses both permanent and transitory instability, and that admits employment transitions and losses from self employment. We also present a detailed decomposition of earnings volatility to account for changing shares in employment probabilities, conditional variances of continuous workers, and conditional mean variances from labor-force entry and exit. Our results show that earnings volatility among men increased by 15 percent from the early …


A Tale Of Two Cities? The Heterogeneous Impact Of Medicaid Managed Care In Kentucky, James Marton, Aaron Yelowitz, Jeffery C. Talbert Jun 2011

A Tale Of Two Cities? The Heterogeneous Impact Of Medicaid Managed Care In Kentucky, James Marton, Aaron Yelowitz, Jeffery C. Talbert

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Does managed care produce lower health care utilization and costs through better aligned financial incentives and alternative delivery methods (the “pure” HMO effect) or by attracting more healthy enrollees (enrollee selection)? The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on this fundamental question using a quasi-experimental approach that exploits the timing and county specific implementation of Medicaid managed care plans in two distinct sub-sets of Kentucky counties in the late 1990s. We find large differences in the relative success of each region in reducing utilization that are likely driven by important differences in plan design. Asthmatic children enrolled …


The Impact Of The 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement On Competitive Balance In The National Hockey League, John L. Simpson Jun 2011

The Impact Of The 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement On Competitive Balance In The National Hockey League, John L. Simpson

Honors Theses

After a lockout that canceled the 2004‐05 season in the National Hockey League (NHL), the owners and players reached a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that instituted a ‘hard’ salary cap, a modified revenue sharing system, and changes in free agency. The principal motivation for the new agreement was to raise competitiveness among the teams, in order to generate greater revenue and profitability and to support higher player salaries. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of the CBA on competitive balance within the NHL and identify the principal determinants of the changes in competitiveness among the teams. …


If You Don’T Build It... Mexican Mobility Following The U.S. Housing Bust, Brian C. Cadena, Brian K. Kovak May 2011

If You Don’T Build It... Mexican Mobility Following The U.S. Housing Bust, Brian C. Cadena, Brian K. Kovak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper demonstrates the importance of earnings-sensitive migration in response to local variation in labor demand. We use geographic variation in the depth of the housing bust to examine its effects on the migration of natives and Mexican-born individuals in the U.S. We find a strong effect of the housing bust on the location choices of Mexicans, with movement of Mexican population away from U.S. states facing the largest declines in construction and movement toward U.S. states facing smaller declines. This effect operated primarily through interstate migration of Mexicans previously residing in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, through …


Nebraska Immigration And Latino Issues Related Legislative Bills, Office Of Latino/Latin American Studies (Ollas) Apr 2011

Nebraska Immigration And Latino Issues Related Legislative Bills, Office Of Latino/Latin American Studies (Ollas)

Latino/Latin American Studies Other Publications

The year 2011 saw many Latino and Immigration-related bills in the Nebraska State Unicameral. View the OLLAS-created chart to read a summary.