Download or read book Essays on the Determinants of Income and Wealth Inequality in the United States written by Shin Chang and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates the relevant factors that drive income and wealth inequality in the United States with the aim of facilitating a better understanding of the dynamic relationships between inequality and key macroeconomic variables. This can serve as a prerequisite to the ability of policymakers to restrain the negative externalities associated with increasing inequality and implement measures to reduce the unexpected effects. The thesis consists of five independent papers corresponding to five chapters. As economic growth is a primary goal of every country and widely accepted tool for reducing economic inequality, our study starts with economic growth. The first paper examines the relationship between the U.S. per capita real GDP and income inequality over the period 1917 to 2012. The literature uncovers a complex set of interactions, which depends on the specific research method and sample, between inequality and economic growth and highlights the difficulty of capturing a definitive causal relationship. Inequality either promotes, retards, or does not affect growth. Most existing studies that examine the inequality-growth nexus exclusively utilize time-domain methods. We use wavelet analysis which allows the simultaneous examination of correlation and causality between the two series in both the time and frequency domains. We find robust evidence of positive correlation between the growth and inequality across frequencies. Yet, directions of causality vary across frequencies and evolve with time. In the time-domain, the time-varying nature of long-run causalities implies structural changes in the two series. These findings provide a more thorough picture of the relationship between the U.S. per capita real GDP and inequality measures over time and frequency, suggesting important implications for policy makers. Inflation targeting is a monetary policy where the central bank sets a specific inflation rate as its goal. The federal government spurs economic growth by adding liquidity, credit, and jobs to the economy and inflation stimulate the demand needed to drive economic growth. The second paper investigates the effects of the inflation rate on income inequality to see whether monetary policy and the resulting inflation rate can affect income inequality and improve the well-being of individuals. Our analysis relies on a cross-state panel for the United States over the 1976 to 2007 period to assess the relationship between income inequality and the inflation rate, employing a semiparametric instrument variable (IV) estimator. By using cross-state panel data, we minimize the problems associated with data comparability often encountered in cross-country studies related to income inequality. We find that the relationship depends on the level of the inflation rate. A positive relationship occurs only if the states exceed a threshold level of the inflation rate. Below this value, inflation rate lowers income inequality. The results suggest that a nonlinear relationship exists between income inequality and the inflation rate. The researchers also examine the relationship between income inequality and growth in personal income, since personal income exerts a large effect on consumer consumption, and since consumer spending drives much of the economy. The third paper investigates the causal relationship between personal income and income inequality in a panel data of 48 states for the period of 1929-2012. Although inequality rose almost everywhere between 1980 to present, some states and regions experienced substantially greater increases in inequality than did others. The decentralization allows different state level of policies, however, there is also a cross-state consistency in how those policies respond to the main economic shocks. Since U.S. states are subject to significant spatial effects given their high level of integration, ignoring cross-sectional dependency may lead to substantial bias and size distortions. We employ a causality methodology proposed by Emirmahmutoglu and Kose (2011), as it takes into account possible slope heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependency in a multivariate panel. Evidence of bi-directional causal relationship exists for several inequality measures -- the Atkinson Index, Gini Coefficient, the Relative Mean Deviation, TheiliÌ8℗¿℗ưs entropy Index and Top 10% -- but no evidence of the causal relationship for the Top 1 % measure. Also, this paper finds state-specific causal relationships between personal income and inequality. The level of development of the United States is related to the sophistication of the financial structure which influences the ability to hedge against shocks and to loosen spending constraints. It leads us to investigate if the financial development affects income inequality in the U.S. In the fourth paper, we look into the role of financial development on U.S. state-level income inequality in a panel data of 50 states from 1976 to 2011. To our knowledge, this paper is the first regarding examining the role of financial development on U.S. state-level inequality. We analyze the data using Fixed Effect and Dynamic Fixed Effect regression. We also divide 50 states into two groups-states, with higher inequality measure and states with lower inequality measures than average of the cross-state average of the inequality, to examine the possible nonlinear impact of financial development on income inequality. We find robust results whereby financial development linearly increases income inequality for the 50 states. When we divide 50 states into two separate groups of higher and lower inequality states than the cross-state average inequality, the effect of financial development on income inequality appears non-linear. When financial development improves, the effect increases at an increasing rate for high income inequality states, whereas an inverted U-shaped relationship exists for low-income inequality states.
Download or read book Inequality and Economic Policy written by Tom Church (Research fellow) and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of the Conference on Inequality in Memory of Gary Becker held September 25-26, 2014 at the Hoover Institution.
Download or read book Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality written by Ms.Era Dabla-Norris and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.
Download or read book Three Essays on Wealth and Income Inequality written by Aaron Cooke and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In two linked papers I show the importance of fertility to the wealth distribution and how fertility interacts with intergenerational transfer taxation. In a third paper I empirically explore the impact of recession on occupational sorting, using public school teachers as a relatively acyclical comparison occupation.
Download or read book Essays on Social Factors Related to United States Income Inequality written by Ilyana Maria Kuziemko and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first essay considers the removal of the parole board's authority to release prisoners before the expiration of their sentence, a policy many states have adopted. I find that this reform discourages prisoners from making human-capital investments while incarcerated and increases recidivism upon release. Thus, not only have more Americans spent time in prison since the 1970s, they have done so in institutions with a diminishing ability to rehabilitate inmates.
Download or read book Essays on the Economic Demographic and Social Dynamics of Income Inequality in the United States written by Jaclyn Butler and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation examines the economic, demographic, and social dynamics of income inequality in the United States. Income inequality is high, and rising, in the United States. Given that income inequality is associated with adverse societal outcomes, it is important to understand the causes and consequences of income inequality. The first chapter examines the effects of manufacturing employment on inequality in U.S. counties, and builds on prior research by disaggregating this sector into the durable and non-durable subsectors. I find that the effects of each subsector vary over time (1990 to 2016) and by county rural-urban status. The protective effects of both durable and nondurable manufacturing have weakened over time in both rural and urban counties, but disproportionately so in urban counties. By the end of the study period, the protective effect of both subsectors was only detected in rural counties. The second chapter examines the effects of population aging on income inequality in U.S. commuting zones and examines whether these effects vary between the mechanisms of aging: aging-in-place and retirement migration. Income inequality is measured as change in the overall level of income inequality and as the shifting shape of the income distribution from 2000 to 2010. I find evidence that population aging's effect on income inequality varies by the aging mechanism. Population aging in the context of aging-in-place decreases income shares in the middle of the distribution. Population aging in the context of retirement migration increases the overall level of income inequality, decreases income shares at the bottom of the distribution, and increases income shares at the top of the distribution. The third chapter examines whether and how people living and working in a high-inequality context perceive the economic and social dynamics of income inequality. Using a case study approach, this chapter uses interview data from 12 study participants to understand the perceptions, causes, and consequences of income inequality in Hancock County, Maine. The findings indicate that participants accurately perceive that income inequality is high, and increasing, in Hancock County. Participants discussed the community's status as a New England summer colony and major tourist destination, which concentrates employment growth in the lower-wage and seasonal service industry. Participants also expressed concern that the housing affordability crisis and the AirBnB economy have hollowed out the sense of community among working- and family-aged residents with lower to moderate incomes. These three papers provide unique insight into the economic, demographic, and social dynamics of income inequality. Their distinctive contributions include analysis of the underlying components of two major economic and demographic processes in the United States (deindustrialization and population aging), as well as qualitative insight into the social dynamics of income inequality in a high-inequality context.
Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Download or read book Three Essays on Inequalities in Income and Health written by Jeff Larrimore and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation considers several aspects of the distribution of income and income inequality. It does so by improving estimates of inequality between demographic groups, analyzing factors contributing to US income inequality trends, and estimating the impact of income on health outcomes for individuals in the lower tail of the income distribution. Most empirical studies of earnings and income inequality across demographic groups are based on data from the public use March CPS. However, censoring of high incomes in this data prevent researchers from observing the full distribution. The first essay uses internal CPS data to illustrate how topcoding results in the understatement of income and earnings gaps between men and women, Blacks and Whites, and people with and without disabilities. It also demonstrates how a new series of mean incomes for topcoded observations can be used in conjunction with public use CPS data to closely approximate these internal results. The second essay considers the factors accounting for trends in household income inequality. Using a shift-share approach, this essay analyzes whether income inequality shifts are accounted for by male and female earnings distribution changes or by changing household characteristics. It illustrates that the factors contributing to the rapid rise in household income inequality in the 1970s and 1980s differ substantially from those contributing to slower increases in the 1990s. In contrast to findings for the 1970s and 1980s, in more recent years increases in male earnings inequality largely account for household income inequality trends while declines in the correlation of spouses' earnings have mitigated household income inequality growth. The final essay shifts from considering income inequality to the impact that income has on the health of low income individuals. Health economists have long observed a positive relationship between health and income but the reason for this relationship is unclear. Using exogenous variation in income from state-level differences in the Earned Income Tax Credit, it observes the impact on morbidity of an exogenous increase in income for low income individuals. The results find only weak evidence that the increases in income result in improvements in self-reported health status or the prevalence of functional limitations.
Download or read book Testing Piketty s Hypothesis on the Drivers of Income Inequality written by Carlos Góes and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2016-08-19 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century puts forth a logically consistent explanation for changes in income and wealth inequality patterns. However, while rich in data, the book provides no formal empirical testing for its theoretical causal chain. In this paper, I build a set of Panel SVAR models to check if inequality and capital share in the national income move up as the r-g gap grows. Using a sample of 19 advanced economies spanning over 30 years, I find no empirical evidence that dynamics move in the way Piketty suggests. Results are robust to several alternative estimates of r-g.
Download or read book The Wealth Gap written by Susan Henneberg and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays presenting opposing viewpoints on the problems of income inequality in the United States, and the various social issues that affect it.
Download or read book Essays on Income Inequality in the United States written by Francisco Alberto Castellanos Sosa and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies income inequality in the United States during the last two decades. The connections income inequality has with other topics and its measurement features allow for its exploration from different perspectives, giving origin to the overarching objective of this dissertation. To examine contemporaneous U.S. income inequality under two of the three stands it might take in any research process: a phenomenon itself and a dependent (outcome) variable. Therefore, the chapters in this dissertation position income inequality under a different spotlight, using a wide array of quantitative methodologies. Income inequality is first considered a phenomenon and disaggregated under Liao's (2016) decomposition at an in-vogue geographical level: Commuting Zones. Such decomposition helps identify the within-share element from a commonly shared income range across all local labor markets and the within-differentiation arising from the differences across the income distributions. Then, it is possible to identify the degree to which the within, between, within-share, and within-differentiations inequality dynamics drive its overall increasing pattern. This approach identifies, through the between component, those local labor markets exerting the most influence in the overall measure. The second perspective considers income inequality as a dependent variable throughout the study of income effects at different parts of its distribution and directly on traditional measures. In doing so, the quasi-random staggered implementation of the Secure Communities program (hereon referred to as SC) is exploited. SC is, in a few words, a federal program to strengthen immigration enforcement efforts across different levels of government agencies. Short-term effects of SC on income inequality are obtained using the improved doubly robust difference-in-differences (DiD) estimator weighted for multiple treatment periods (DRIMP) proposed by Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021). Effects in overall wages, by gender and main education groups, by income deciles, and by traditional inequality measures are estimated
Download or read book Three Essays on Income and Wealth Inequality written by Damir Cosic and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Unequal Chances written by Samuel Bowles and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "New estimates show that intergenerational inequality in the United States is far greater than was previously thought. Moreover, while the inheritance of wealth and the better schooling typically enjoyed by the children of the well-to-do contribute to this process, these two standard explanations fail to explain the extent of intergenerational status transmission. The genetic inheritance of IQ is even less important. Instead, parent-offspring similarities in personality and behavior may play an important role. Race contributes to the process, and the intergenerational mobility patterns of African Americans and European Americans differ substantially."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Essays on Income Inequality Political Inequality and Income Redistribution in the U S written by Pavel Brendler and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first chapter, entitled "Life-time earnings inequality and income redistribution through social security in the U.S.", is devoted to social security, which is the public pension system in the U.S. In 2015, the Social Security Advisory Board proposed to the Congress to change the parameters of the pension benefit formula, which have been constant since 1977. This change implies a fall in statutory replacement rates for individuals with high lifetime earnings. I construct a model, which accounts for a significant portion of the proposed change. Counterfactual experiments suggest that increased uncertainty in the labor productivity process and the upward shift in the college premium explain most of the change in the parameters of the pension benefit formula. The second chapter, "Income inequality and political inequality in the U.S.", is devoted to the median voter theorem, which is one of the most celebrated results in the public choice theory. Existing structural models predict too high income redistribution for the U.S. economy if the tax rate is chosen by the median voter. One potential explanation is that the political process in the U.S. is biased towards richer agents. In this case, the decisive agent is richer than the standard median voter and therefore prefers lower redistribution consistent with the data. I introduce wealth-weighted majoritarian voting over progressive income taxation into a heterogeneous agent model with idiosyncratic risk. I show that the model can significantly better explain the dynamics of income redistribution in the U.S. since 1980s than a model with a standard median voter. In the third chapter of my dissertation, entitled "Voter mobilization and electoral competition", which is a joint work with Ilya Archakov, we analyze the impact of voter abstention on electoral competition in the U.S. We present a novel game theoretic approach to study the competition between two candidates for a seat in a legislature, when candidates can spend money both on advertising to gain a larger share of potential supporters and on voter mobilization to bring the supporters to the voting poll. We show that the results of our model are consistent with the campaign expenditure data by the Federal Election Commission for the 2010 and 2012 House of Representative election cycles.
Download or read book Essays on Top Income Inequality written by Jihee Kim and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Top income inequality, defined as the income gap within the top 1% income group, has been rising in the United States since the 1980s but remained low and stable in economies like France and Japan. Why? This dissertation studies what might have affected the widening income gap in the United States as well as the cross-country differences. The first chapter considers the most natural candidate: the effect of the top marginal tax rate on the high-income taxpayers. Identifying endogenous human capital accumulation as a link between top marginal tax rates and top incomes, this chapter shows that a decline in the top marginal tax rate can increase top income inequality as well as top incomes. We develop an infinite-horizon, heterogeneous agent model, where human capital accumulation is endogenously characterized by a proportional random growth process. If the top marginal tax rate declines, the benefit of human capital investment will increase, thereby increasing the growth rate of human capital. Since this growth rate pins down the Pareto inequality measure of the top income distribution, a decrease in the top marginal tax rate will lead to a more unequal Pareto income distribution, while simultaneously increasing every top income. When calibrated to the U.S. income data, the model finds that the reduction of the top marginal tax rate from 60% to 35% can account for 46.6% of the increase in top income inequality and 41.0% of the increase in the top 1% income share between 1980 and 2010. The second chapter theoretically examines three other candidates: the rise in the rate of top income growth, the direction of technological change, and misallocation of top talents to firms. The first model shows that if the growth rate of top incomes increases either by the rise in the returns to experience or by the rise in human capital accumulation effort, the top income inequality increases. The second model studies the direction of technological change and shows why the technological changes can be "talent-biased" at least along a transition path. The last model shows that top income inequality can increase when the matching between firms and talent becomes more efficient. This suggests that the rise in top income inequality in the United States may reflect an improvement in the allocation of talent.
Download or read book Inequality and Growth written by Theo S. Eicher and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007-01-26 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even minute increases in a country's growth rate can result in dramatic changes in living standards over just one generation. The benefits of growth, however, may not be shared equally. Some may gain less than others, and a fraction of the population may actually be disadvantaged. Recent economic research has found both positive and negative relationships between growth and inequality across nations. The questions raised by these results include: What is the impact on inequality of policies designed to foster growth? Does inequality by itself facilitate or detract from economic growth, and does it amplify or diminish policy effectiveness? This book provides a forum for economists to examine the theoretical, empirical, and policy issues involved in the relationship between growth and inequality. The aim is to develop a framework for determining the role of public policy in enhancing both growth and equality. The diverse range of topics, examined in both developed and developing countries, includes natural resources, taxation, fertility, redistribution, technological change, transition, labor markets, and education. A theme common to all the essays is the importance of education in reducing inequality and increasing growth.
Download or read book Does Corruption Affect Income Inequality and Poverty written by Mr.Sanjeev Gupta and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1998-05-01 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper demonstrates that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty by reducing economic growth, the progressivity of the tax system, the level and effectiveness of social spending, and the formation of human capital, and by perpetuating an unequal distribution of asset ownership and unequal access to education. These findings hold for countries with different growth experiences, at different stages of development, and using various indices of corruption. An important implication of these results is that policies that reduce corruption will also lower income inequality and poverty.
