scholarly journals Subnational Inequality Divergence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom VanHeuvelen

How have inequality levels across local labor markets in the subnational United States changed over the past eight decades? In this study, I examine inequality divergence, or the inequality of inequalities. While divergence trends of central tendencies such as per capita income have been well documented, less is known about the descriptive trends or contributing mechanisms for inequality. In this study, I construct wage inequality measures in 722 local labor markets covering the entire contiguous United States across 22 waves of Census and American Community Survey data from 1940-2019 to assess the historical trends of inequality divergence. I apply variance decomposition and counterfactual techniques to develop main conclusions. Inequality divergence follows a u-shaped pattern, declining through 1990 but with contemporary divergence at as high a level as any time in the past 80 years. Early era convergence occurred broadly and primarily worked to reduce interregional differences, whereas modern inequality divergence operates through a combination of novel mechanisms, most notably through highly unequal urban areas separating from other labor markets. Overall, results show geographical fragmentation of inequality underneath overall inequality growth in recent years, highlighting the fundamental importance of spatial trends for broader stratification outcomes.

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 961-963

This year marks the 42nd anniversary of the American Academy of Pediatrics. From its original 35 members, in this short span of years, the Academy has become a progressive, rapidly growing, vigorous group of more than 14,000 Fellows-four-fifths of all the United States pediatricians and a representative percentage of the pediatricians in Central and South America and Canada. During this interval, the Academy has consistently developed its programs and activities to advance and promote the health and welfare of children. Yet for the first 35 years we were basically an educational, disease-oriented organization, with little impact on community-oriented medical services, or on the socioeconomics of health care. Fortunately in the past several years there has been a decided change in the policies, priorities, and direction of the Academy. This is best reflected by its recent expanded goals and objectives in a complete revision of Article III, Section I of its Constitution. Even though we are still primarily disease-oriented physicians, we must not forget the problems that are deterrents to good health. We can hardly expect mcdicine to solve every social, political, and economic ill of the ghetto, suburbia, and the rural areas of our country; however, we do have an important role to play and we do have an important contribution to make in our communities. These areas, large or small and wherever they may be, will not have the same medical health and manpower needs, nor the same priorities, and will continually need our individual and collective attention. The United States has more physicians per capita than all but three or four other nations.


2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Schmitt

By most measures, the United States is the most unequal of the world's advanced capitalist economies, and inequality has increased substantially over the past 30 years. This article documents trends in the inequality of three key economic distributions—hourly earnings, annual incomes, and net wealth—and relates these developments to changes in economic and social policy over the past three decades. The primary cause of high and rising inequality is the systematic erosion of the bargaining power of lower- and middle-income workers relative to their employers, reflected in the erosion of the real value of the minimum wage, the decline in unions, widescale deregulation of industries such as airlines and trucking, the privatization and outsourcing of many state and local government activities, increasing international competition, and periods of restrictive macroeconomic policy.


Author(s):  
Satoshi Kanazawa ◽  
Norman P. Li

This chapter describes the savanna theory of happiness, which posits that it may not be only the consequences of a given situation in the current environment that affect individuals’ happiness but also what its consequences would have been in the ancestral environment. The theory further suggests that the effect of such ancestral consequences on happiness is stronger among less intelligent individuals than among more intelligent individuals. Consistent with the theory, being an ethnic minority, living in urban areas, and socializing with friends less frequently all reduce happiness, but the effects of these conditions are significantly stronger among less intelligent individuals than among more intelligent individuals. The theory can further explain why some individuals suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and why women’s level of happiness has steadily declined in the United States in the past half-century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Ben Yuk Fai Fong ◽  
Vincent T. S. Law

The coronavirus pandemic has been affecting many countries in the world over the past six months. Nowhere sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Precautionary measures, lockdown, as well as control of crowd gathering and movement have been implemented by all governments, with the sacrifice of economic activities. It is interesting to review how things were happening in North America where the United States has been hard hit by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), scoring over two million confirmed cases and about 120 thousand deaths at the top of the list of the world. Canada ranked eighteenth with about 100 thousand cases and just about 8 thousand deaths. Both the cases and deaths per capita are lower in Canada, which shares the same border and similar culture with the United States. Seattle and Vancouver have some of the highest incomes and educational levels in both countries. These two West coast cities are only 200 kilometres apart and are near the U.S.-Canada border. They are selected for this review to study the different approaches in managing the COVID-19 pandemic.


Worldview ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
James Greene

The speed with which economics has sped to the front of the Cold War over the past four years has caught the West-used to diplomatic maneuvering and “little wars”-off guard. We have, as yet, no adequate answer to what may well prove to be Communism's most devastating weapon-a Soviet economy producing at a greater per capita rate than the United States. No nation of free men ever rallied round a column of statistics, and yet, clearly, that is where the current battle between East and West has moved.The change, it now seems, was inevitable. When they continue for any period of time, “total” wars, both hot and cold, slip more and more from the grasp of those charged with diplomacy and come to rest upon the impersonal powers of clashing armies, armies either on the battlefields or in the factories.


2013 ◽  
Vol 103 (6) ◽  
pp. 2121-2168 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H Autor ◽  
David Dorn ◽  
Gordon H Hanson

We analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets, exploiting cross-market variation in import exposure stemming from initial differences in industry specialization and instrumenting for US imports using changes in Chinese imports by other high-income countries. Rising imports cause higher unemployment, lower labor force participation, and reduced wages in local labor markets that house import-competing manufacturing industries. In our main specification, import competition explains one-quarter of the contemporaneous aggregate decline in US manufacturing employment. Transfer benefits payments for unemployment, disability, retirement, and healthcare also rise sharply in more trade-exposed labor markets. (JEL E24, F14, F16, J23, J31, L60, O47, R12, R23)


1970 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-263
Author(s):  
Mark Frank

This paper introduces a new panel of annual state-level income inequalitymeasures over the ninety year period 1916-2005. Among many of the states inequalityfollowed a U-shaped pattern over the past century, peaking both before the GreatDepression and again at the time of the new millennium. The new panel revealssignificant state-level variations, both before the year 1945, and regionally. WhileNortheastern states are strongly correlated with aggregate U.S. trends, we find manyof the Western states have little overall correlation over the past century. The availabilityof this new panel may prove useful to empirical researchers interested in allaspects of income inequality, particularly given the panel’s unusually large numberof both time-series and cross-sectional observations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (S2) ◽  
pp. S533-S594 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Albouy ◽  
Alex Chernoff ◽  
Chandler Lutz ◽  
Casey Warman

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Albouy ◽  
Alex Chernoff ◽  
Chandler Lutz ◽  
Casey Warman

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