Beyond Piketty: A new perspective on poverty and inequality in India

The socio-economic literature has focused much on how overall inequality in income distribution (frequently measured by the Gini coefficient) undermines the “trickle down” effect. In other words, the higher the inequality in the income distribution, the lower is the growth elasticity of poverty. However, with the publication of Piketty’s magnum opus (2014), and a subsequent study by Chancel and Piketty (2017) of evolution of income inequality in India since 1922, the focus has shifted to the income disparity between the richest 1% (or 0.01%) and the bottom 50%. Their central argument is that the rapid growth of income at the top end of millionaires and billionaires is a by-product of growth. The present study extends this argument by linking it to poverty indices in India. Based on the India Human Development Survey 2005–12 – a nationwide panel survey-we examine the links between poverty and income inequality, especially in the upper tail relative to the bottom 50%, state affluence (measured in per capita income) and their interaction or their joint effect. Another feature of our research is that we analyse their effects on the FGT class of poverty indices. The results are similar in as much as direction of association is concerned but the elasticities vary with the poverty index. The growth elasticities are negative and significant for all poverty indices. In all three cases, the disparity between the income share of the top 1% and share of the bottom 50% is associated with greater poverty. These elasticities are much higher than the (absolute) income elasticities except in the case of the poverty gap. The largest increase occurs in the poverty gap squared – a 1% greater income disparity is associated with a 1.24% higher value of this index. Thus the consequences of even a small increase in the income disparity are alarming for the poorest.     

网络社会各阶层的分析

网络社会是一种新的社会形态,其内部结构是不同接点组成的亚网络。具有相同信息编码的接点就是网络社会的一个阶层。由互联网重构的网络社会,结构上可分为三个大类,在每个大类下面又可以分成若干阶层。网络社会的每一个阶层之间也存在着不平等,如果这种不平等演变出巨大的数字鸿沟,将给现实世界带来新的社会问题。     

缩小差距、城乡融合与共同富裕

站在全面建成小康社会的新的历史起点,为主动适应社会主要矛盾的变化,中央不断强调推动共同富裕,旨在实现均衡而充分的高质量发展。关于共同富裕的探讨围绕以下两方面展开:其一,推动共同富裕必须有雄厚的物质基础,解决好以绝对收入标准衡量的贫困问题就是实现“富裕”的最基本要求。今后农村的相对贫困是全国绝大多数省份都将面临的共性问题和挑战,农民增收问题必须置于城乡融合的框架中解决。其二,缩小收入差距是共同富裕的本质要求之一,将收入差距缩小在一定水平上,实现发展与共享的统一、效率与公平的和谐,这也是“共同”的要义所在。当前我国城乡收入绝对差距仍然较大,与实现共同富裕的要求有较大差距,也会影响经济增长,妨碍新发展格局的构建。因此,牢牢把握住城乡融合发展的主线,强化统筹谋划和顶层设计,破除城乡二元分割的体制弊端,对于当前我国推动共同富裕而言应是重要的战略侧重点。     

Working and disability expectancies at older ages: The role of childhood circumstances and education

The ability to work at older ages depends on health and education. Both accumulate starting very early in life. We assess how childhood disadvantages combine with education to affect working and health trajectories. Applying multistate period life tables to data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) for the period 2008–2014, we estimate how the residual life expectancy at age 50 is distributed in number of years of work and disability, by number of childhood disadvantages, gender, and race/ethnicity. Our findings indicate that number of childhood disadvantages is negatively associated with work and positively with disability, irrespective of gender and race/ethnicity. Childhood disadvantages intersect with low education resulting in shorter lives, and redistributing life years from work to disability. Among the highly educated, health and work differences between groups of childhood disadvantage are small. Combining multistate models and inverse probability weighting, we show that the return of high education is greater among the most disadvantaged.     

Public housing into private assets: Wealth creation in urban China

State socialist economies provided public housing to urban citizens at nominal cost, while allocating larger and better quality apartments to individuals in elite occupations. In transitions to a market economy, ownership is typically transferred to existing occupants at deeply discounted prices, making home equity the largest component of household wealth. Housing privatization is therefore a potentially important avenue for the conversion of bureaucratic privilege into private wealth. We estimate the resulting inequalities with data from successive waves of a Chinese national income survey that details household assets and participation in housing programs. Access to privatization programs was relatively equal across urban residents in state sector occupations. Elite occupations had substantially greater wealth in the form of home equity shortly after privatization, due primarily to their prior allocations of newer and higher quality apartments. The resulting gaps in private wealth were nonetheless small by the standards of established market economies, and despite the inherent biases in the process, housing privatization distributed home equity widely across those who were resident in public housing immediately prior to privatization.     

不平等的再生产：从社会经济地位到健康不平等--基于CFPS2010的实证分析

本文利用2010年中国家庭追踪调查（ CFPS ）数据，探索性分析了社会经济地位影响健康不平等的两个中介机制－－健康预防机制和健康恢复机制。研究结果表明，健康预防机制中，社会经济地位影响生活方式，进而影响自评健康水平的假设得到部分验证，其中营养水平的中介效应得到验证；健康恢复机制中，社会经济地位影响医疗保健能力，进而影响自评健康水平的假设得到部分验证，其中医疗保健支付能力的中介效应得到证明。最后，分析发现，＂看病贵＂比＂看病难＂更能影响民众的健康状况。     

Exploring Neglected Dimensions of Social Policy: The SDW, Fiscal Welfare and the Exemplar of Local Taxation in England

Titmuss's Social Division of Welfare (SDW) thesis is a vitally important but much neglected element of social policy analysis. This article seeks to explore the SDW, with a particular focus on fiscal welfare. Fiscal welfare has been described as forming a hidden welfare state, and while taxation is one of the main ways in which governments affect the lives of citizens, studies of welfare pay remarkably little attention to its impact. Fiscal welfare is examined by using, as an exemplar, local taxation in England, a subject that itself is neglected within social policy. Local taxation in England is of interest because it illustrates the impact of a system of taxation on different groups of citizens, and how this can operate to the benefit of rich over poor citizens. This is because the current system is highly regressive, meaning that those on low and middle incomes spend proportionately more of their income paying the tax than do those on high incomes. What is of further interest is how within the debate about reform of local taxation, concern with regressivity becomes obscured and ceases to be the focus of attention. We are thus provided with an example of how fiscal welfare remains a hidden issue. The article concludes by arguing that social policy analysis needs to move beyond the narrow confines of social welfare and develop a broader understanding of welfare, based on the SDW.     

Income inequality and participation: A comparison of 24 European countries

Previous research suggests that when there is a high level of inequality, there is a low rate of participation. Two arguments are generally offered: First, inequality depresses participation because people from different status groups have fewer opportunities to share common goals. Second, people may participate more in civic and social life when they have more resources. However, until now, these explanations have not been separated empirically. Using EU-SILC data for 24 European countries, we analyze how income inequality is related to civic and social participation. Our results indicate that the main effects of inequality manifest via resources at the individual and societal level. However, independent of these resources, higher inequality is associated with lower civic participation. Furthermore, inequality magnifies the relationship between income and participation. This finding is in line with the view that inter-individual processes explain why inequality diminishes participation.     

Reconsidering “community liberated”: How class and the national context shape personal support networks

The “community liberated” thesis has been influential in describing contemporary social support systems. Specifically, “community liberated” argues that people do not seek support in their immediate neighborhood but rather entertain a network of far-flung ties to support-providing alters. This paper uses personal network data from six countries – Australia, Germany, the US, Austria, Hungary and Italy – to evaluate this argument and shows that the degree of liberation of one's community is strongly linked to one's socioeconomic status – specifically, one's education level. Additionally, we describe strong country-level heterogeneity in the spatial dynamics of personal support networks and find national contexts to be moderating the effect of education on community liberation, especially in Italy and Hungary, thus suggesting network geographic dispersion to be linked to national economic structures and labor markets. The paper thus elucidates the effect of two different, yet related social contexts on personal networks: the class context and the national context.     

Changing effects of family background on transitions to secondary education in the Netherlands: Consequences of educational expansion and reform

Recent developments in educational transitions research suggest a decomposition of qualitative dimensions within educational levels that are (nearly) universal. However, research on long-term trends of social stratification in the structurally tracked educational system of the Netherlands has not been published previously. In the Netherlands, the secondary educational level is divided into four hierarchical tracks which each lead to different options for subsequent educational decisions. A rapid increase of participation in the higher tracks over time however, may have changed the background-specific distribution of early track placement. This paper improves upon previous research on educational inequality by incorporating a long-term perspective into tracking research. The secondary level of the Dutch educational system is decomposed into its four tracks, using a time frame that covers cohorts that entered secondary education between 1946 and 1998. The application of multinomial logit regressions reveals that the choice of a secondary track is strongly depending on social background features, measured as education of the parents and occupational status of the father. We found linear downward trends of effects for fathers’ occupation in the intermediate tracks for the cohorts that entered secondary education between WWII and the 90s. The effects of parental education also decrease after WWII, but the trend is curvilinear and not enduring. Unexpectedly, the effects almost reach their previous level in the youngest cohort. Our results furthermore suggest that a controversial reform of the educational system in 1968 neither triggered nor accelerated equalization of secondary education, although it resulted in a growth of participation in senior general education (HAVO).