scholarly journals Growing Apart: The Evolution of Income vs. Wealth Inequality

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cragg ◽  
Rand Ghayad

AbstractThe gap between the richest Americans and the rest of the nation has changed dramatically over the past three decades – becoming one of the most challenging political and economic trends for the nation. For decades prior to that, the distribution of wealth and income had been relatively stable, so much that a central problem posed in the economics literature was to explain this stability. But beginning in the early 1980s, inequality began to grow rapidly and has recently been attracting substantial attention from policymakers and researchers reflecting a widespread concern that reflecting a widespread concern that growing labor incomes of senior executives, finance professionals, and successful entrepreneurs is entailing large economic costs to society. The dominant paradigm in the media and Washington is that inequality is purely a matter of divergence in earned (labor) income inequality which can be ameliorated by making earned income taxes more progressive and shifting spending to help the poorer. However, this is not the story: wealth inequality, as it turns out, is much worse. This warrants emphasis for a variety of reasons: (1) a growing body of research that suggests that in the head-on comparison it is wealth inequality, rather than income inequality or poverty that has a negative, statistically significant effect on economic growth.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 006-017
Author(s):  
Alexander A. Rakviashvili ◽  

The article provides a literature review of studies of the impact of monetary policy on income and wealth inequality. Based on the analysis and systematization of the articles mainly written over the past 25–30 years as well as articles written by central bank authorities, the main approaches to assessing the extent to which the Fed's actions are responsible for the growth of wealth inequality in the United States, which began in the 1970s, are identified. It was revealed that the relative unanimity of economists on this issue was replaced by significant pluralism of opinions after the crisis of 2007–2009. Among other reasons this was caused by the activity of central banks and their use of non-conventional approaches in conducting the monetary policy. In addition, the channels through which the actions of central banks affect the distribution of wealth in the economy are identified. In total, five such channels were singled out. Thus, changes in the monetary policy affect the debt market and the structure of assets and liabilities of households, while households with fixed incomes and with a high propensity to use cash are more likely to suffer losses during the expansionary monetary policy. And the fifth channel, which is less popular among the economists, the "Cantillon effect", leads to an increase in the wealth of the first recipients of the issued money at the expense of those who are farthest from the center of emission. The article provides empirical evidence of why this effect is significant for the American economy, and theoretical arguments indicating that taking the Cantillon effect into account can add certainty to studies of both monetary policy costs and institutional changes caused by rising inequality.


Author(s):  
Margaret Jacobson ◽  
Filippo Occhino

Labor income has been declining as a share of total income earned in the United States for the past three decades. We look at the past effect of the labor share decline on income inequality, and we study the likely future path of the labor share and its implications for inequality.


Author(s):  
Salvatore Morelli ◽  
Brian Nolan ◽  
Philippe Van Kerm

This chapter brings wealth into the picture, again in a comparative perspective, to bring out key features of recent trends and their implications for the prosperity and prospects of ordinary families. Data on the distribution of wealth has been improving in recent years, and new data are exploited here to examine patterns of wealth holding across the income distribution. In doing so, particular attention is paid to the extent and nature of wealth held by middle and lower income working-age families, and how this differs from those higher up the distribution. The chapter also looks at inequality in the distribution of wealth compared with income, and whether wealth inequality has widened as income inequality has grown.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gibson ◽  
Felix Rioja

Abstract Public infrastructure is one of the foundations for the economic growth of a country. While there is a strong consensus regarding infrastructure’s effect on growth, less is known about the effect of infrastructure on welfare and the distribution of wealth. In this paper, we examine the quantitative effect of infrastructure investment on welfare and the degree of inequality present within a developing country. In so doing, we characterize the effects resulting from increased infrastructure investment by tracing out the entire transition path between steady states. Three results standout: (i) both average and individual welfare effects are sizable, regardless of how the additional investment is financed, (ii) when distortionary taxes are adjusted to finance additional investment, poorer agents benefit more when the interest income tax is used, while richer agents benefit more when either the consumption or labor income taxes are used, (iii) inequality, as measured by the wealth Gini, rises in the short-run, but the long-run effect depends on which financing method is chosen.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nishant Yonzan

Labor income inequality among couples has increased by 33 percent in the U.S. over the past half-century. Over the same period, the correlation of labor income within couples has also increased sharply. Is this increase in sorting over labor income a cause for the rise of labor income inequality among couples? Using the March supplement of the CPS, first, I find that there has been a sharp increase in positive sorting over labor income in the U.S. in the 1970-2018 period. The top decile of men’s earners married to the top decile of women’s earners has doubled from 10.6 percent in 1970 to 23.3 percent in 2018. Second, I use a bounded copula framework as a reference distribution to track the relative changes in labor income inequality among couples. Using this framework, I find that positive sorting over labor income did play a role in increasing labor income inequality among couples in the 1970-1990 period; however, I find little evidence to suggest that this relationship existed in the 1990-2018 period. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper)


World Affairs ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 181 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-306
Author(s):  
Gregory R. Thorson ◽  
Sera M. Gearhart

One of the most important economic trends of the past 30 years has been the escalating levels of within-country income inequality. Much of the developed world is currently experiencing large increases in income inequality. Indeed, income inequality in the United States now exceeds the previous highs of the 1930s. Recent research has found that increases in income inequality can produce a wide variety of societal ills. This article examines the effects of economic inequality on educational outcomes. Drawing on data provided by the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2000 through 2015, we find that a country’s level of economic inequality has large, negative effects on its student academic achievement. The effect sizes are largest in math. We examine a variety of potential solutions to lessen within-country economic inequality.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Ranaldi ◽  
Branko Milanovic

The paper investigates the relationship betweencapitalism systems and their levels of income andcompositional inequality (how the composition ofincome between capital and labor varies along incomedistribution). Capitalism may be seen to range betweenClassical Capitalism, where the rich have only capitalincome, and the rest have only labor income, andLiberal Capitalism, where many people receive bothcapital and labor incomes. Using a new methodologyand data from 47 countries over the past 25 years, weshow that higher compositional inequality is associatedwith higher inter-personal inequality. Nordic countriesare exceptional because they combine highcompositional inequality with low inter-personalinequality. We speculate on the emergence ofhomoploutic societies where income composition maybe the same for all, but Gini inequality nonethelesshigh, and introduce a new taxonomy of capitalistsocieties. (Stone Center Working Paper Series)


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Ranaldi ◽  
Branko Milanovic

The paper investigates the relationship betweencapitalism systems and their levels of income andcompositional inequality (how the composition ofincome between capital and labor varies along incomedistribution). Capitalism may be seen to range betweenClassical Capitalism, where the rich have only capitalincome, and the rest have only labor income, andLiberal Capitalism, where many people receive bothcapital and labor incomes. Using a new methodologyand data from 47 countries over the past 25 years, weshow that higher compositional inequality is associatedwith higher inter-personal inequality. Nordic countriesare exceptional because they combine highcompositional inequality with low inter-personalinequality. We speculate on the emergence ofhomoploutic societies where income composition maybe the same for all, but Gini inequality nonethelesshigh, and introduce a new taxonomy of capitalistsocieties. (Stone Center Working Paper Series) Revised


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4(13)) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Shiyu Zhang ◽  

Over the past decade, bilateral relations between China and Russia have attracted the attention of the whole world. As neighbors and rapidly developing countries, China and Russia are becoming increasingly important in the international arena. The strategic partnership and interaction between China and Russia occupy a significant place in the politics of both countries. Cooperation is developing dynamically in various fields, primarily in politics. After 2012, a change of government took place in China and Russia, which brought new changes to international relations. Studying the involvement of the media in this process can clarify their impact on international relations, in particular, their role in the relationship between China and Russia.


1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry E. Cushing

Distinct parallels exist between the historical evolution of scientific disciplines, as explained in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the historical evolution of the accounting discipline. These parallels become apparent when accounting's dominant paradigm is interpreted to be the double-entry bookkeeping model. Following this interpretation, the extensive articulation of the double-entry model over the past four centuries may be seen to closely resemble the “normal science” of Kuhn's theory. Further parallels become apparent when Kuhn's concept of the disciplinary crises that precede scientific revolutions is compared to developments in the accounting discipline over the past 25 years. This portrayal of accounting's evolution suggests an uncertain future for the accounting discipline.


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