scholarly journals Income inequality and intragenerational income mobility in Sweden from 1983 to 2010: Following two birth cohorts

Author(s):  
Birgitta Jansson

AbstractSweden has been known for having one of the most equal income distributions in the world. However, in recent decades, Sweden has experienced increasing income inequality. An alternative way of measuring the development of inequality is to study and compare the income development within and between two birth cohorts according to gender and different positions of income distribution. The focus in this paper is to study how individual disposable personal income has changed by aging and at various positions of the income distribution, as well as the gender disposable income gap and intragenerational income mobility. Three positions of the income distribution were chosen: percentile 10; median; and percentile 99. Two cohorts, including all individuals born in 1948 and 1958, were tracked from 35 years of age to 53 years of age – with two 18-year overlapping periods, 1983–2000, and 1993–2010. The results show a complex and multifaceted image of the development of income inequality and mobility, within and between the two birth cohorts. Especially male low-income earners, born 1958, have been left behind. Income mobility differ according to gender where women have increased mobility in the bottom quintile and decreased in the top quintile, men experienced the opposite. When modelling mobility education have decreased to contribute to an upward mobility, especial for cohort born 1958. Taking all the results together, the development of increasing income inequality in Sweden is apparent.

2020 ◽  
pp. 014616722092385
Author(s):  
Edika G. Quispe-Torreblanca ◽  
Gordon D. A. Brown ◽  
Christopher J. Boyce ◽  
Alex M. Wood ◽  
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

How do income and income inequality combine to influence subjective well-being? We examined the relation between income and life satisfaction in different societies, and found large effects of income inequality within a society on the relationship between individuals’ incomes and their life satisfaction. The income–satisfaction gradient is steeper in countries with more equal income distributions, such that the positive effect of a 10% increase in income on life satisfaction is more than twice as large in a country with low income inequality as it is in a country with high income inequality. These findings are predicted by an income rank hypothesis according to which life satisfaction is derived from social rank. A fixed increment in income confers a greater increment in social position in a more equal society. Income inequality may influence people’s preferences, such that in unequal countries people’s life satisfaction is determined more strongly by their income.


2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 381-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgitta Jansson

AbstractIn recent decades, the Swedish economy has been characterized by rather fast economic growth. At the same time, income inequality has increased substantially. In the present study, I investigated who has gained and who has been left behind during this period—how disposable personal income has changed for men and women, as well as for those in different positions in the income distribution. Register data for the total population (aged 20 to 80 years old) from 1983 to 2010 were used and three different positions in the income distribution were investigated: percentile 10, the median, and percentile 99. Five years were selected: 1983, 1991, 2000, 2006, and 2010. Each selected year represents a snapshot and describes the general trend. Results show that women in the 10th percentile have increased their income quite well, a result of increased female labor force participation during the period. This has led to a decrease of the income gap between genders within this group. But results also show a masculinization of low income and poverty, as the male incomes in this group have not increased to the same extent as for males in the other income groups. At the median, both men and women experienced a steady increase of incomes, but the gender gap for ages younger than 50 widened between 2000 and 2010. At the very top, percentile 99, the increase in disposable personal income was enormous; however, the gender gap in income did not decrease.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 248-265
Author(s):  
Joanna Małgorzata Landmesser

AbstractResearch background: Household income depends on its demographic composition, age and education of its members, place of residence and many other factors. In our work, we concentrate on the income distribution of Polish households.Purpose: The study aims to compare the household income distributions in Polish voivodeships, taking into account the gender of the family head. We provide evidence on the magnitude and determinants of regional differences in gender-specific income disparities.Research methodology: In order to move beyond estimation based on mean values, we apply the Residual Imputation Approach and extend the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition procedure to different quantile points along the income distribution. To describe the differences between two income distributions we construct a counterfactual distribution and decompose the inequalities into explained and unexplained components.Results: The regional variation of the gender income gap has been explained with individual and jobrelated characteristics. There exists an important diversity in the size of the gender income gap across the Polish provinces. The results obtained for 16 voivodeships allowed us to group them into four clusters: heavily industrialized voivodeships with a large income gap, weakly industrialized with a low income gap, voivodships with large agglomerations characterized by a low gap, and medium-developed voivodeships with a large, U-shaped gap.Novelty: Our results provide novel insights into the regional dimension of the income gap.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882110119
Author(s):  
Matthew Polacko

Previous research into the relationship between income inequality and turnout inequality has produced mixed results, as consensus is lacking whether inequality reduces turnout for all income groups, low-income earners, or no one. Therefore, this paper builds on this literature by introducing supply-side logic, through the first individual-level test of the impact that income inequality (moderated by policy manifesto positions) has on turnout. It does so through multilevel logistic regressions utilizing mixed effects, on a sample of 30 advanced democracies in 102 elections from 1996 to 2016. It finds that higher levels of income inequality significantly reduce turnout and widen the turnout gap between rich and poor. However, it also finds that when party systems are more polarized, low-income earners are mobilized the greatest extent coupled with higher inequality, resulting in a significantly reduced income gap in turnout. The findings magnify the negative impacts income inequality can exert on political behavior and contribute to the study of policy offerings as a key moderating mechanism in the relationship.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 79-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morteza Nemati ◽  
Ghasem Raisi

Nowadays, improvement in income distribution and poverty eradication and hence low inequality are served as the main objectives of economic and social development strategy even prior than primary tasks of governments. to manifest importance of income distribution, some economists adopt income inequality and income distribution in society as criteria for economic system of the community, although these criteria and measures are theoretical for the economic system and this varies from the perspective of different people, however, it denotes on  importance of income distribution among individuals. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of economic growth on income inequality in the selection of low-income developing countries.To this end, using panel data and data for 28 developing countries over the period 1990-2010 the relationship between GDP and the Gini coefficient was examined. The results indicate that as per hypothesis Kuznets in the early stages of growth, income inequality increases and then it declines in later stage.


2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 1150-1190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saurav Pathak ◽  
Etayankara Muralidharan

This article explores the extent to which income inequality and income mobility—both considered indicators of economic inequality and conditions of formal regulatory institutions (government activism)—facilitate or constrain the emergence of social entrepreneurship. Using 77,983 individual-level responses obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey of 26 countries, and supplementing with country-level data obtained from the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum, our results from multilevel analyses demonstrate that country-level income inequality increases the likelihood of individual-level engagement in social entrepreneurship, while income mobility decreases this likelihood. Further, income mobility negatively moderates the influence of income inequality on social entrepreneurship, such that the condition of low income mobility and high income inequality is a stronger predictor of social entrepreneurship. We discuss implications and limitations of our study, and we suggest avenues for future research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-56
Author(s):  
Mansor Ibrahim

The present paper seeks to assess the implications of increasing financial sector size on income inequality in eight Asian countries - Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea.  Adopting a panel data approach, it document a non-linear relation between income inequality and financial sector size in these countries.  More precisely, the increasing financial sector size is favourable to equal income distribution only up until a size threshold, beyond which further expansion of the financial sector can worsen income distribution.  The analysis further highlights the income-equalizing effect of economic growth and infrastructure development and the income un-equalizing effect of trade and government expenditures.  These results are robust to alternative model specifications and to exclusion of a country at a time from the sample.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 253
Author(s):  
Veronika V. Eberharter

Based on longitudinal data from the Cross-National Equivalent File 1980–2016 (CNEF 1980–2016) the paper analyzes the extent of income inequality and capability deprivation and the driving forces of the intergenerational transmission of social and economic status of two birth cohorts in Germany, and the United States. In both the countries the empirical results show increasing inequality of the real equivalent household income, and younger cohorts experience a higher persistence of social and economic status. In the United States income inequality is more expressed than in Germany, which is in accordance with lower intergenerational income mobility. The contribution of individual and family background characteristics and capability deprivation indicators to intergenerational income mobility is more pronounced in the United States than in Germany. The significant impact of capability deprivation in childhood on the intergenerational transmission of economic chances emphasizes the importance of economic and social policy designated to guarantee the equality of opportunity.


Author(s):  
Yue Chim Richard Wong

It is a mistake to believe that the minimum wage helps low-income households, the workers, and, to a lesser extent, even among the high-income households. For Hong Kong to genuinely address poverty, it is far more important to study much more comprehensively the real incidence and causes of poverty and not let politics get in the way. The provision of a basic income is a far better policy than a minimum wage. Has minimum wage made a difference in helping low-income households and reducing income inequality? What effect has it had on labor market employment and unemployment?


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0249204
Author(s):  
Ji-Won Park ◽  
Chae Un Kim

Income inequality is known to have negative impacts on an economic system, thus has been debated for a hundred years past or more. Numerous ideas have been proposed to quantify income inequality, and the Gini coefficient is a prevalent index. However, the concept of perfect equality in the Gini coefficient is rather idealistic and cannot provide realistic guidance on whether government interventions are needed to adjust income inequality. In this paper, we first propose the concept of a more realistic and ‘feasible’ income equality that maximizes total social welfare. Then we show that an optimal income distribution representing the feasible equality could be modeled using the sigmoid welfare function and the Boltzmann income distribution. Finally, we carry out an empirical analysis of four countries and demonstrate how optimal income distributions could be evaluated. Our results show that the feasible income equality could be used as a practical guideline for government policies and interventions.


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