Opportunity and inequality in the emerging esports labor market

Esports is often described as a growing industry ripe with financial opportunities for young professional, competitive gamers. However, these claims rarely consider how income is distributed amongst players. This study uses prize earnings data from 2005 to 2019 to examine labor market inequality and related social inequalities and social stratifications. Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients show that inequality has increased in the labor market overall and the labor markets for the five top games based on total prizes awarded ( Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, League of Legends, StarCraft II). Competitors can expect to earn more today than in 2005, but median incomes have shown sporadic and inconsistent growth compared with top incomes. Moreover, most competitors earn less than the US poverty threshold. Comparing the earnings of the top female players to the whole labor market shows that gender inequalities exist in median incomes and the likelihood of earning more than the poverty threshold. The esports labor market is an engine of inequality that provides opportunities for a few (primarily male) competitors while building a growing class of lowly paid players who support the interests of game designers and event organizers.

The twilight of neoliberalism in the USA?

The US economic expansion which began in 2009 was unusually prolonged but relatively weak. Profitability and investment strengthened between 2010 and 2015 but then began to falter. After Trump took office in 2017 there was a minor recovery in investment but the proceeds of major tax cuts were overwhelmingly used to finance payouts to share owners. Unemployment fell steadily from 2010 but with a shift towards lower-paid jobs. Median wages increased from around 2014, but while those for women had risen steadily since the 1980s, those for men only recuperated to their 1980 level in 2018. By contrast, top incomes soared. The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic was partly cushioned by huge government spending programmes, but unemployment among less-skilled workers increased strongly, while the massive monetary response led to an unprecedented bonanza for the rich. The Biden government's first major initiative extended unemployment benefits and promoted a national response to the health emergency, but failed to secure an increase in the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Capital and Labor: The Factor Income Composition of Top Incomes in the United States, 1962-2006

This paper finds that capital and labor incomes in the United States have become more closely associated since the 1980s. This contributed to the well-known increase in the top 1% share of total income, exacerbating rising inequality in capital incomes and earnings. We show that the trend in the association is U-shaped as the recent increase contrasts with a tendency toward a weakening association until the 1980s. The paper uses data derived from tax records, studies the asymmetries in the association and tests for robustness to alternative income definitions, including the role of income from closely-held businesses at the top.

Top incomes in South Africa in the twentieth century

There have been important studies of recent income inequality and of poverty in South Africa, but very little is known about the long-run trends over time. There is speculation about the extent of inequality when the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, but no hard evidence. In this paper, we provide evidence that is partial—being confined to top incomes—but which for the first time shows how the income distribution changed on a (near) annual basis from 1913 onwards. We present estimates of the shares in total income of groups such as the top 1% and the top 0.1%, covering the period from colonial times to the twenty-first century. For a number of years during the apartheid period, we have data classified by race. The estimates for recent years bear out the picture of South Africa as a highly unequal country, but allow this to be placed in historical and international context. The time series presented here will, we hope, provide the basis for detailed investigation of the impact of South African institutions and policies, past and present. But the similarity of the changes over time in top incomes across the four ex-dominions suggests that national developments have to be seen in the light of common global forces.

Trends in US Spatial Inequality: Concentrating Affluence and a Democratization of Poverty

We use Bureau of Economic Analysis, census, and Current Population Survey data to study trends in income inequality across US states and counties from 1960-2019. Both states and counties have diverged in terms of per capita pretax incomes since the late1990s, with transfers serving to dampen this divergence. County incomes have been diverging since the late 1970s. These trends in mean income mask opposing patterns among top-and bottom-income quantiles. Top incomes have diverged markedly across states since the late 1970s. In contrast, bottom-income quantiles and poverty rates have converged across areas in recent decades.

Brazil

After three decades of persistently high income inequality, from 2001 onwards Brazil experienced a downward inequality trend followed by rising household income growth. Both movements lasted until 2015. This work synthesizes the results of six papers that describe the evolution of Brazilian income distribution. A common approach pursued was to jointly assess inequality, mean income, and social welfare rates of growth. We use a vast array of datasets to fill the gaps found in the literature. Top incomes’ movements reduced income inequality fall but increased mean income growth, suggesting challenges in measuring and interpreting inequality changes. Overall, inequality fall was driven by labour earnings through firm-specific effects. Rising schooling and falling returns also played a role, especially if parents’ educational background is taken into account. Missing income values did not affect inequality measures. Direct and indirect taxes increased inequality trends, while official monetary benefits helped to reduce them.