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Publications (28)
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– Different economic models but similarly low levels of socioeconomic mobility
The United States and China are the world’s largest economies. Together they are responsible for about one-third of the world’s economic output. This paper aims to examine whether the two economic giants are also lands of opportunity where resources are allocated in a way that minimizes unrealized...
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– A comparative approach with India
We analyse income and expenditure distribution in China in a comparative perspective with India. These countries represent extreme cases in the relationship of inequality to both wellbeing indicators. Income is more highly concentrated than expenditure in India, especially at the top of the...
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– Model-based simulation and case-study evidence
The North Indian village of Palanpur has been the subject of close study over a period of six decades from 1957/8 to 2015. Himanshu et al. (2018) have documented the evolution of the village economy over this period in an exhaustive study entitled How Lives Change: Palanpur, India and Development...
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– Labour markets and fiscal redistribution 1989–2014
Income inequality in Mexico increased between 1989 and 1994; between 1994 and 2006, inequality declined; and, between 2006 and 2014, inequality was again on the rise. We apply decomposition techniques to analyse the proximate determinants of labour income inequality and fiscal incidence analysis to...
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Productivity and socio-economic progress are inter-connected. Economic growth funds policies that promote socio-economic progress, while the latter serves as a growth engine. A society with high mobility is one where individual achievements are influenced less by the individual’s parents and more by...
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After three decades of persistently high income inequality, from 2001 Brazil experienced a downward inequality trend followed by rising household income growth. Both movements lasted until 2015. This work synthesizes the results of six papers, describing Brazilian income distribution trends and...
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We synthesize the findings from several recent papers on South Africa’s very high income inequality. These papers use new datasets—including income tax data—and new empirical methods to investigate the drivers of household income and individual earnings inequality in South Africa. Increased returns...
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– Data collection and the impact on income inequality
With the data on the top incomes collected from different sources, we combine the samples of the top incomes with a household survey to investigate changes in the income distribution with and without the top incomes. The Gini coefficient of income inequality using household survey data is 0.464 for...
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Studies of the spatial dimensions of inequality in developing countries are mostly restricted to states, provinces, or districts, typically the smallest geographical units for which data are representative in national surveys. We introduce a procedure to calculate inequality between and within...
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– Using house prices to estimate inequality in Mumbai
This paper applies a novel inequality estimation method to household consumption expenditure in Mumbai, India. Since the richest households may be missing in survey data, this re-estimated inequality figure takes them into account by combining survey data with house price data. However, application...
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– Poverty, vulnerability, and mobility, 1987–2012
We analyse the Indian National Sample Survey data spanning the period 1987/88–2011/12 to uncover patterns of transition into and out of different classes of consumption distribution. At the aggregate level, income growth has accelerated, accompanied by accelerating poverty decline. Underlying these...
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– Development, transition, and policy
In this paper we describe the major trends in China’s income inequality over the past 40 years and explain them as the outcome of four interleaved stories. The first story is a standard development story characterized by structural change, market development, labour absorption, and the Kuznets...
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– 1988–2013
We investigate the evolution of wage levels, wage inequality, and wage determinants among urban residents in China using China Household Income Project data from 1988, 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2013. Average wage grew impressively between each pair of years. Wage inequality had long been on the increase...
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The first democratic elections in 1994 brought about the promise for equal opportunity and an overall improvement of living standards for the majority of the South African population. However, 20 years after the democratization of South Africa, levels of inequality remain stubbornly high. The...
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This paper is the first to compare global trends in income and wealth inequality this century. It is based on large income and wealth microdata samples designed to be representative of all countries in the world. Measured by the Gini coefficient, inequality between countries accounts for about two...
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– The role of firms, education, and top incomes 1994–2015
This paper documents the evolution and the determinants of earnings inequality in the Brazilian formal sector from 1994 to 2015, using establishment level data. In 2015, schooling explained 33 per cent of overall inequality. Firm-specific effects explain 65 per cent of total inequality level and 76...
Displaying 16 of 28 results