scholarly journals CAN THE “TAX THE RICH, SUBSIDISE THE POOR” POLICY IMPROVE FINANCIAL SATISFACTION AMONG MALAYSIANS?

Author(s):  
Ling-Meng Chan ◽  
Chia-Guan Keh ◽  
Siu-Eng Tang ◽  
Yan-Teng Tan ◽  
Ying-Yin Koay

“Tax the rich, subsidise the poor” is deemed one of the typical finance characteristics of democracy and a solution in reducing income inequality. The Malaysian government has also adopted this strategy in its income redistribution policy. Evidently, this strategy can minimise the income gaps at the country level. However, it is doubtful if it can be effectively done at the individual level. The rich have to pay more while the poor can enjoy the ‘free’ income. Would that lead to financial satisfaction? Hence, the main objective of this study was to investigate the impact of individual perceptions on the government’s democratic act in implementing "tax the rich, subsidise the poor" policy for financial satisfaction among Malaysians. For an empirical analysis, this paper discusses the study conducted which used the sixth wave of the World Value Survey (WVS) data with 1290 respondents and is regressed by the ordered logit and ordered probit modelling. The results indicated that the democratic act of ‘taxing the rich and subsidising the poor’ in reality reduces financial satisfaction among Malaysians. In contrast, these same Malaysians wish for a larger income difference as an incentive for individual efforts. In view of this, the government and policy makers should make revisions to the current progressive taxation system or look for other alternative taxation systems which may be seen as fairer and can improve financial satisfaction among Malaysians at each income level.

Author(s):  
MANDY BOEHNKE ◽  
MICHAEL FELDHAUS

Utilizing a multi-level analytic approach (HLM), the present study analyzes reasons for variations in the number of children among 4069 25- to 34-year old women in 25 OECD countries, surveyed in the World Value Survey (WVS). Educational attainment, household income, age, and pro-child attitudes were included as individual-level predictors, whereas on the country-level, individualism and masculinity (as conceptualized by Hofstede), the Human Development Index (HDI), marriages rates, female employment rates, and early childcareenrolment rates were used as predictors. On the individual level, pro-child attitudes and age covaried positively with number of children, educational attainment did so negatively, whereas household incomewas unrelated. Beyond the overall finding that more highly educated women have fewer children, analyses revealed that the impact of education on fertility varies significantly between countries. Of the macro-level indicators, HDI had the strongest impact in that women in countries higher on HDI have fewer children. Country-specific individualism predicted individual number of children positively after partialing for HDI. This result was, however, not sustained, once female employment rates were included in the prediction model: Against age-old folklore convictions, 25- to 34-year-old woman in countries with a high female employment rate have more not fewer children.


2022 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. e2109690119
Author(s):  
Ingvild Almås ◽  
Alexander W. Cappelen ◽  
Erik Ø. Sørensen ◽  
Bertil Tungodden

We report on a study of whether people believe that the rich are richer than the poor because they have been more selfish in life, using data from more than 26,000 individuals in 60 countries. The findings show a strong belief in the selfish rich inequality hypothesis at the global level; in the majority of countries, the mode is to strongly agree with it. However, we also identify important between- and within-country variation. We find that the belief in selfish rich inequality is much stronger in countries with extensive corruption and weak institutions and less strong among people who are higher in the income distribution in their society. Finally, we show that the belief in selfish rich inequality is predictive of people’s policy views on inequality and redistribution: It is significantly positively associated with agreeing that inequality in their country is unfair, and it is significantly positively associated with agreeing that the government should aim to reduce inequality. These relationships are highly significant both across and within countries and robust to including country-level or individual-level controls and using Lasso-selected regressors. Thus, the data provide compelling evidence of people believing that the rich are richer because they have been more selfish in life and perceiving selfish behavior as creating unfair inequality and justifying equalizing policies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Lutfi Agus Salim

All Indonesian children are national assets where the future of the nation depends on their quality. East Java Province experienced a demographic bonus period and the peak occurred in 2019 and a third of the population of East Java were children aged 0-17 years. Now the government of East Java Province has implemented five strategies in dealing with demographic bonuses, namely improving the quality of youth human resources, creating quality human resources, placing the elderly population as assets, improving health efforts, and economic empowerment. In the strategy of increasing health efforts, it is necessary to evaluate the nutritional status of children and toddlers. Improving the nutritional status of the community is one of the efforts that has a significant impact and is one of the determining factors for improving the quality of human resources. At the individual level, nutritional conditions are influenced by nutritional intake and related infectious diseases. The first two years of life is a critical period, if there are nutritional disorders in this period, the impact is permanent.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (04) ◽  
pp. 1850026 ◽  
Author(s):  
ABDALLAH ALSAAD

The paper examines the impact of individual culture orientations on the nascent entrepreneurship at the individual level. The cultural orientations investigated in this study were based on Schwartz’s values model. Using data from World Value Survey collected from seven countries ([Formula: see text]), we investigate the direct effect of Open to Change, Self-enhancement, Conservation and Self-transcendence values on nascent entrepreneurship. The results show that the Open to Change values, including Stimulation and Self-direction values, significantly and positively affect nascent entrepreneurship. Only one of the Self-enhancement values has a positive effect on nascent entrepreneurship — the Power value. Meanwhile, Conservation values, including Tradition and Security, negatively and significantly affect the nascent entrepreneurship. Finally, the results show no support for the association between Self-transcendence values and nascent entrepreneurship. Our findings highlight that some values are more conducive to driving or inhibiting nascent entrepreneurship. Investigating the effect of individual cultural orientations on nascent entrepreneurship in the lens of personal values benefits us to comprehend individual motivations toward entrepreneurship, and will light many features of entrepreneurship behavior at the individual level and within and across cultures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-130
Author(s):  
Paula Clerici

Abstract The conventional understanding in the scholarly literature is that the main dimension that sets legislators’ ideal points is the tension between the government and the opposition parties. In this article, I challenge this claim, demonstrating that this alignment is contingent on the level of party system nationalization. These consequences have not been fully documented. Using DW-NOMINATE to calculate Argentine legislators’ ideal points (1983–2017), I show that individual territorialization in roll call voting increases when the party system is more decentralized. Legislators are closer to their provincial delegation, irrespective of which party they belong to, when there are low levels of party nationalization. At the individual level, this mechanism may be understood by the competing principals’ theory: because party system decentralization implies a response to local dynamics over national dynamics, cross-pressured legislators may favor their subnational principal.


2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
João Cancela

Understanding the roots of political engagement has been one of the critical tasks performed by students of comparative political behaviour. This paper adds to the literature by examining the determinants of political discussion about local and national affairs in Europe. A series of multilevel logit models are fitted to the data (n = 28,563 from 31 European countries) to test the individual and country level determinants of political discussion about local and national matters. At the individual level, we find that gender, the type of community, the type of civil society organisations people are members of, and their level of education affect the type of politics they engage with. At the macro level, citizens from countries with a higher economic development are more likely to engage in discussions about national affairs, while the impact of local government autonomy does not seem to make individuals more likely to engage in discussions about local politics. The findings suggest that if local politics is considered the share of politically disengaged citizens can be smaller than is typically estimated. The full range of democratic practice may thus remain underappreciated if non-national politics is left out of the picture in the study of political engagement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 1161
Author(s):  
Raluca Pais ◽  
Thomas Maurel

The epidemiology and the current burden of chronic liver disease are changing globally, with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) becoming the most frequent cause of liver disease in close relationship with the global epidemics of obesity, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The clinical phenotypes of NAFLD are very heterogeneous in relationship with multiple pathways involved in the disease progression. In the absence of a specific treatment for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), it is important to understand the natural history of the disease, to identify and to optimize the control of factors that are involved in disease progression. In this paper we propose a critical analysis of factors that are involved in the progression of the liver damage and the occurrence of extra-hepatic complications (cardiovascular diseases, extra hepatic cancer) in patients with NAFLD. We also briefly discuss the impact of the heterogeneity of the clinical phenotype of NAFLD on the clinical practice globally and at the individual level.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135406612110014
Author(s):  
Glen Biglaiser ◽  
Ronald J. McGauvran

Developing countries, saddled with debts, often prefer investors absorb losses through debt restructurings. By not making full repayments, debtor governments could increase social spending, serving poorer constituents, and, in turn, lowering income inequality. Alternatively, debtor governments could reduce taxes and cut government spending, bolstering the assets of the rich at the expense of the poor. Using panel data for 71 developing countries from 1986 to 2016, we assess the effects of debt restructurings on societal income distribution. Specifically, we study the impact of debt restructurings on social spending, tax reform, and income inequality. We find that countries receiving debt restructurings tend to use their newly acquired economic flexibility to reduce taxes and lower social spending, worsening income inequality. The results are also robust to different model specifications. Our study contributes to the globalization and the poor debate, suggesting the economic harm caused to the less well-off following debt restructurings.


2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (13) ◽  
pp. 2503-2517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vítor V. Vasconcelos ◽  
Francisco C. Santos ◽  
Jorge M. Pacheco

Global coordination for the preservation of a common good, such as climate, is one of the most prominent challenges of modern societies. In this manuscript, we use the framework of evolutionary game theory to investigate whether a polycentric structure of multiple small-scale agreements provides a viable solution to solve global dilemmas as climate change governance. We review a stochastic model which incorporates a threshold game of collective action and the idea of risky goods, capturing essential features unveiled in recent experiments. We show how reducing uncertainty both in terms of the perception of disaster and in terms of goals induce a transition to cooperation. Taking into account wealth inequality, we explore the impact of the homophily, potentially present in the network of influence of the rich and the poor, in the different contributions of the players. Finally, we discuss the impact of polycentric sanctioning institutions, showing how such a scenario also proves to be more efficient than a single global institution.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document