Ideals of Egalitarianism and Sufficiency in Global Justice

Author(s):  
Debra Satz

It is well known that there are large differences in the per capita income levels of the world's states. While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, for some countries, the gaps are growing wider. Most of this global inequality is between countries, not within them. In other words, even if income were equalized within countries, a large part of the gap in average income levels between countries would remain.At the same time, the majority of movements in the wealthier countries for greater distributive equality have tended to focus on inequalities within their own borders: on issues such as raising minimum wages, changing the domestic tax rate, and ending national health disparities. This state-centric focus is frequently justified in moral terms. It is a familiar claim, for example, that we have special obligations to our own citizens and that these obligations are both weightier and more extensive than our obligations to strangers outside our borders.

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 694-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mónica Santillán Vera ◽  
Angel de la Vega Navarro

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively examine if varying household consumption activities at different income levels drove CO2 emissions to different degrees in Mexico from 1990 to 2014. Design/methodology/approach The paper applied a simple expenditure-CO2 emissions elasticity model – a top-down approach – using data from consumption-based CO2 emission inventories and the “Household Income and Expenditure Survey” and assuming a range of 0.7-1.0 elasticity values. Findings The paper results show a large carbon inequality among income groups in Mexico throughout the period. The household consumption patterns at the highest income levels are related to significantly more total CO2 emissions (direct + indirect) than the household consumption patterns at the lowest income levels, in absolute terms, per household and per capita. In 2014, for example, the poorest household decile emitted 1.6 tCO2 per capita on average, while the wealthiest decile reached 8.6 tCO2 per capita. Practical/implications The results suggest that it is necessary to rethink the effect of consumption patterns on climate change and the allocation of mitigation responsibilities, thus opening up complementary options for designing mitigation strategies and policies. Originality/value The paper represents an alternative approach for studying CO2 emissions responsibility in Mexico from the demand side, which has been practically absent in previous studies. The paper thereby opens a way for studying and discussing climate change in terms of consumption and equity in the country.


JEJAK ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-266
Author(s):  
Hadi Sasana ◽  
Salman Fathoni

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) believed to be one of the instruments to reduce gap between the rich and the poor countries has considered Asian countries destination, including ASEAN Region. The aim of this study was to analyze factors affecting FDI in ASEAN countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) during 2007-2016. The method used to analyze the data was multiple linear regression. The results indicated that market size, government integrity, and infrastructure quality positively affected FDI; wages and exchange rates negatively affected FDI; while, economic crisis had negative effect only in Malaysia. Meanwhile, economic openness, tax rate, and interest rate did not affect FDI inflow in ASEAN countries.


2015 ◽  
pp. 30-53
Author(s):  
V. Popov

This paper examines the trajectory of growth in the Global South. Before the 1500s all countries were roughly at the same level of development, but from the 1500s Western countries started to grow faster than the rest of the world and PPP GDP per capita by 1950 in the US, the richest Western nation, was nearly 5 times higher than the world average and 2 times higher than in Western Europe. Since 1950 this ratio stabilized - not only Western Europe and Japan improved their relative standing in per capita income versus the US, but also East Asia, South Asia and some developing countries in other regions started to bridge the gap with the West. After nearly half of the millennium of growing economic divergence, the world seems to have entered the era of convergence. The factors behind these trends are analyzed; implications for the future and possible scenarios are considered.


1973 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-437
Author(s):  
Sarfaraz Khan Qureshi

In the Summer 1973 issue of the Pakistan Development Review, Mr. Mohammad Ghaffar Chaudhry [1] has dealt with two very important issues relating to the intersectoral tax equity and the intrasectoral tax equity within the agricultural sector in Pakistan. Using a simple criterion for vertical tax equity that implies that the tax rate rises with per capita income such that the ratio of revenue to income rises at the same percentage rate as per capita income, Mr. Chaudhry found that the agricultural sector is overtaxed in Pakistan. Mr. Chaudhry further found that the land tax is a regressive levy with respect to the farm size. Both findings, if valid, have important policy implications. In this note we argue that the validity of the findings on intersectoral tax equity depends on the treatment of water rate as tax rather than the price of a service provided by the Government and on the shifting assumptions regard¬ing the indirect taxes on imports and domestic production levied by the Central Government. The relevance of the findings on the intrasectoral tax burden would have been more obvious if the tax liability was related to income from land per capita.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Veny Anindya Puspitasari

<p>The minimum wage is a macroeconomic issue that is still debated, Basically, the minimum wage policy aimed to protect workers, so that thet earn an adequate wages to finance the basic needs of their life. Practically, the minimum wage policy often encounters its purpose because it is regarged as miserable for those who have no expertise. This phenomenon is mainly happening in the low –avegrage- income countries that have many unskilled workers. Gahana, Indonesia, Costra Rica were used to be analyzed in this paper. According to International Water Association data year 2006, those countris earn income per capita less than US$ 9,200 and were categorized as low average – income countries. This research found that minimum wage impelentation in all three countries was not effective. When minimum wage policy was implemented, a lot of people felt aggrieved.</p><p>Keywords : Economic polict, Minimum wage, Income</p>


Author(s):  
Joerg Baten ◽  
Christina Mumme

AbstractThis paper explores the inequality of numeracy and education by studying school years and numeracy of the rich and poor, as well as of tall and short individuals. To estimate numeracy, the age-heaping method is used for the 18th to early 20th centuries. Testing the hypothesis that globalization might have increased the inequality of education, we find evidence that 19th century globalization actually increased inequality in Latin America, but 20th century globalization had positive effects by reducing educational inequality in a broader sample of developing countries. Moreover, we find strong evidence for Kuznets’s inverted U hypothesis, that is, rising educational inequality with GDP per capita in the period until 1913 and the opposite after 1945.


2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-289
Author(s):  
Eduard J. Alvarez-Palau ◽  
Alfonso Díez-Minguela ◽  
Jordi Martí-Henneberg

AbstractThis study explores the relationship between railroad integration and regional development on the European periphery between 1870 and 1910, based on a regional data set including 291 spatial units. Railroad integration is proxied by railroad density, while per capita GDP is used as an indicator of economic development. The period under study is of particular relevance as it has been associated with the second wave of railroad construction in Europe and also coincides with the industrialization of most of the continent. Overall, we found that railroads had a significant and positive impact on the growth of per capita GDP across Europe. The magnitude of this relationship appears to be relatively modest, but the results obtained are robust with respect to a number of different specifications. From a geographical perspective, we found that railroads had a significantly greater influence on regions located in countries on the northern periphery of Europe than in other outlying areas. They also helped the economies of these areas to begin the process of catching up with the continent’s industrialized core. In contrast, the regions on the southern periphery showed lower levels of economic growth, with this exacerbating the preexisting divergence in economic development. The expansion of the railroad network in them was unable to homogenize the diffusion of economic development and tended to further benefit the regions that were already industrialized. In most of the cases, the capital effect was magnified, and this contributed to the consolidation of newly created nation-states.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
John Bosco Ngendakurio

Abstract This article seeks to reveal the primary barriers to fair economic development based on Kenyans’ perceptions of power and globalization. This search was initially sparked by the seeming disinterest of First World scholars to understand the reasons why poor countries benefit so little from the global market as reflected in a subsequent lack of a wide-ranging existing literature about the subject. The literature suggests that global capitalism is dominated by a powerful small elite, the so-called Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC), but how does this relate to Kenya and Africa in general? We know that the TCC has strong connections to financial capital and wealthy transnational corporations. It also pushes neo-liberalism, which becomes the taken-for-granted everyday language and culture that justifies state policies that result in a further class polarization between the rich and poor. Using Kenya as a case study, this article draws on original qualitative research involving face-to-face interviews with Kenyan residents in different sectors who spoke freely about what they perceive to be Kenya’s place in the world order. My interview results show that, on top of the general lack of economic power in the world order, the main barriers to Africa’s performance are neo-colonial and imperialist practices, poor technology, poor infrastructure, general governance issues, and purchasing power.


2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Gbetnkom

Some authors support that regionalism among underdeveloped countries will tend to cause divergence of their income levels, and regional integration among rich countries will tend to cause convergence. This paper tests this convergence hypothesis in CEMAC between 1990-2002. Our findings lend support to the “convergence club” defined according to policy choices rather than initial levels of human capital. They show that unilateral and preferential suppression of tariff and non-tariff barriers favor the convergence of per capita incomes and reduce the dispersion of real per capita income levels of partners in the sub-region. These results make the idea of convergence club based on the initial levels of productive technology and GDP per capita relative.


2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Agrawal ◽  
Dirk Foremny
Keyword(s):  
Tax Rate ◽  

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