We're All in This Together: Context, Contacts, and Social Trust in Canada

How do conditions of diversity and inequality affect the sense of solidarity with each other that is manifested as social trust? This article brings together the literatures on racial heterogeneity, inter-group contact and relative deprivation to test and enrich the existing theoretical understanding of trust. It explores the effects of city and neighborhood contexts, individual experiences of inter-group relations, and their moderating effects on social trust. Findings suggest that the influence of a city's level of ethnic/racial diversity and income inequality is conditioned by inter-group social ties and experiences of discrimination. By considering the characteristics of neighborhoods, racial diversity of cities no longer has any significant association with trust in others. However, income inequality at the city level interacts with experiences of discrimination to undermine trust. Public policies aimed at improving social cohesion would benefit from considering the joint impact of economic and social policies that regulate resource distribution and hence shape inter-group relations.     

收入不平等对中国居民幸福感的影响及其机制研究

本文立足于社会规范视角,以中国综合社会调查(CGSS)数据为基础,考察与分析区域层次的收入不平等对居民幸福感的影响及其机制。结果显示,当前中国的收入不平等会损害个人对幸福的积极体验。与高收入群体相比,低收入群体更容易产生这种负向感知。相对剥夺和关系信任构成的社会心理过程是影响收入不平等与个人幸福感关系的重要机制,资源供给机制未获调查数据的支持。在此基础上,本文认为,国民幸福感的高低并非取决于收入不平等本身,而是分配体系构建的合理性。所以,建立具有公平正义价值导向的收入分配体系是提升中国居民幸福感的发展方向。     

等价交换中的不平等问题研究

劳动生产率差异、供求非均衡、垄断、非对称信息和非市场定价等条件下的商品交换都会产生不平等问题,但这类不平等问题都源于不等价交换。实际上,商品的等价交换仍然会产生不平等问题,其直接原因在于生产价格的形成,而生产价格的形成是隶属于不同所有者或利益主体的资本追逐利润的结果。生产价格形成后,价值(剩余价值)在不同产业或地区之间发生了转移,劳动投入和所得不再完全一致。不过,这种不一致在一国范围内和世界市场上具有本质的区别。     

Does financial development affect income inequality in the U.S. States?

This paper examines the role of financial development on U.S. state-level income inequality in the 50 states from 1976 to 2011, using fixed-effect estimation. We find robust results whereby financial development linearly increases income inequality for the 50 states. When we divide 50 states into two separate groups of above-average and below-average inequality states than the cross-state average inequality, the effect of financial development on income inequality appears non-linear. When financial development improves, the effect increases at an increasing rate for above-average income-inequality states, whereas an inverted U-shaped relationship exists for below-average income-inequality states. To our knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the role of financial development on U.S. state-level inequality.     

Theorizing income inequality in the face of financial globalization

Based on an extended post-Keynesian model, we find that the association between the savings rate and income inequality is negative if savers’ funds are borrowed by spending households for consumption but positive if savings are channeled to investing firms for production. A negative association, such as the one that exists in the U.S., hinges on an income illusion created by an asset bubble and cheap credit. Thus, financial globalization leads consumption and income inequality to diverge, and the divergence is more extreme if lower-income groups have higher debt ratios. A positive association, such as the one that exists in China, relates to liquidity constraints faced by consumers such that consumption inequality closely follows income inequality. Our results imply that income inequality must be reduced in both types of countries to increase savings in deficit economies with negative associations and to reduce savings in surplus economies with positive associations.     

收入差距、不平等感知与公众容忍度

本文辨析和检验了收入不平等的两种表现形式及其对公众容忍度的影响效应。研究结果显示，客观收入差距对公众容忍度并无直接影响，而感知的收入差距越大，对不平等的厌恶倾向越明显。但客观差距大并不意味着个体感知到的差距大，感知偏差及情境分割效应的存在，区县而非省级、时下而非过往的收入差距状况更易为个体所捕捉和感知，进而对其容忍度产生间接影响，且这种情境传导效应及对客观差距的感知程度在不同群体间有明显差异。这一结果为我们理解过大收入差距与较高容忍度共存的反差现象提供了基于分配结构异质性的观察视角和情境反应在地化的经验解释。     

收入不平等与个体健康——基于2005年中国综合社会调查的实证分析

文章利用2005年中国综合社会调查（CGSS2005）数据与县级社会统计资料,通过拟合多层Logistic回归模型,分析了地区收入不平等程度对个体健康状况的影响,系统检验了绝对收入理论和收入不平等理论。结果表明,即使在控制了个体收入对健康的凹陷效应之后,县级收入不平等程度仍对个体自评健康具有显著的负面影响。对收入不平等影响健康的作用机制的进一步分析表明,社会心理机制仅能部分解释不平等对健康的负面效应,而新唯物主义机制未能得到经验支持。     

Density zoning and class segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas

Objectives:Socioeconomic segregation rose substantially in U.S. cities during the final decades of the 20th century, and we argue that zoning regulations are an important cause of this increase.Methods. We measure neighborhood economic segregation using the Gini coefficient for neighborhood income inequality and the poor-affluent exposure index. These outcomes are regressed on an index of density zoning developed from the work of Pendall for 50 U.S. metropolitan areas, while controlling for other metropolitan characteristics likely to affect urban housing markets and class segregation.Results. For both 2000 and changes from 1990 to 2000, OLS estimates reveal a strong relationship between density zoning and income segregation, and replication using 2SLS suggests that the relationship is causal. We also show that zoning is associated with higher interjurisdictional inequality.Conclusions. Metropolitan areas with suburbs that restrict the density of residential construction are more segregated on the basis of income than those with more permissive density zoning regimes. This arrangement perpetuates and exacerbates racial and class inequality in the United States.     

教育对非农就业工资收入不平等的解释研究

基于分位数回归方法和1989~2009年CHNS的入户数据,根据明瑟方程的回归结果显示,低收入组的教育收益率高于高收入组的教育收益率。通过重新构建的工资不平等程度度量变量和教育不平等以及经验差异度量变量,对离差模型的分位数回归结果显示虽然教育能够提高低收入群体的工资收入,但是教育差距并不能很好地解释收入不平等的扩大。     

The distributive impact of private pensions in the context of the institutional designs of public pension systems across OECD countries

Income inequality has been increasing across the developed world for the last few decades. The welfare state has played an important role in reducing income inequality, but it has now entered into an era of transformation. The shift from public to private pension schemes is one of the main policy instruments in this shift. An increase in private pensions is expected to create an increase in income inequality. Therefore, using data from OECD SOCX, this study examined how the effect of private pensions on income inequality might be changed by the institutional design of public pension systems. The results suggest that the effect of private pensions differs when the institutional design of the public pension system is considered. An increase in private pensions is related to an increase in income inequality when the public pension has a low level of coverage and a high level of earnings‐relatedness.     

Behavioral responses and the distributional effects of the Russian ‘flat’ tax

This paper simulates the distributional impact of the Russian personal income tax (PIT) following the flat tax reform of 2001 using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. I decompose the change in the distribution of net income into a direct (tax) effect and an indirect effect. The indirect effect is further decomposed into evasion and productivity effects using existing estimates of these respective elasticities. As expected, the direct tax effect increased net income inequality. Changes in the pre-tax distribution (indirect effect), on the other hand, had a large negative impact on inequality thus leading to an overall decline in net income inequality. I also find that the tax-induced evasion response increased reported net income inequality while reducing consumption inequality. To the extent that consumption approximates actual income, these results demonstrate that the flat tax reform had a much smaller effect on actual income inequality than on reported income inequality. More importantly, relative to non-tax factor, the reform had little overall effect on income inequality. This suggests that objection to flatter tax schedules on the grounds of income inequality is mostly misguided, especially in transitional countries with high levels of evasion.     

The Lottery and Income Inequality in the States*

Objective. Since the early 1970s, income inequality in the United States has increased dramatically. We examine the impact of state lotteries on income inequality in the American states from 1976–1995. Methods. We use cross‐sectional time‐series data to evaluate the effect of lotteries as well as those of other state tax policies, redistributive programs, and demographic factors on income inequality. Results. We find that state lotteries foster income concentration. Ceteris paribus, states with lotteries have higher levels of income inequality than those states without a lottery. We also find that additional demographic and policy factors have an impact on income inequality in the states. Conclusions. One of the most important policy‐oriented determinants of income inequality is the lottery and a significant portion of the increase in income inequality over our two‐decade time period is attributable to the increasing prevalence and popularity of state lotteries.     

农村非农就业对中国城乡收入不均等的影响——基于中国东中西部面板数据的比较研究

通过对劳动力流动和收入分配的相关研究进行综述,并基于1989～2008年中国各省份的面板数据,采用STATA10.0计量软件,建立联立方程组,运用似不相关方法实证研究农村非农就业对中国区域城乡收入不均等的影响,结果表明：中国农村非农就业在一定程度上扩大了省际间城乡收入不均等;从中国东中西部各地区实证结果看,农村非农就业有利于缩小东部地区的城乡收入不均等,但扩大了中西部地区城乡收入不均等,且农村非农就业对西部地区城乡收入差距的影响程度远高于全国和东中部地区。     

The Value of a Statistical Life and the Coefficient of Relative Risk Aversion

Individuals’ risk preferences are estimated and employed in a variety of settings, notably including choices in financial, labor, and product markets. Recent work, especially in financial economics, provides estimates of individuals’ coefficients of relative risk aversion (R’s) in excess of one, and often significantly higher. However, it can be shown that high R’s imply equally high values for the income elasticity of the value of a statistical life. Yet estimates of this elasticity, derived from labor and product markets, are in the range of 0.5 to 0.6. Furthermore, it turns out that even an R below one is difficult to reconcile with these elasticity estimates. Thus, there appears to be an important (additional) anomaly involving individuals’ risk-taking behavior in different market settings.JEL Classification: D80, G11, G12, I10, J17     

Focusing the mediating role of institutional trust: How does interpersonal trust promote organizational commitment?

Numerous organization scholars point out that trust is crucial for well-functioning organizations. However, trust in organizational settings could differ according to the objects of trust. This study compares two conceptually different models: main-effect model and mediation-effect model. The main-effect model assumes that both interpersonal trust and institutional trust promote organizational commitment independently, but the mediation-effect model assumes that institutional trust is cultivated by interpersonal trust and increases organizational commitment. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) show that the mediation-effect model fits better than the main-effect model and that the structural coefficients of the mediation-effect model are neatly interpreted by social scientific studies of trust. This study's findings have two important implications: First, there seems to be sequential order between different types of trust in organizational settings. Second, interpersonal trust promotes organizational commitment only if it facilitates institutional trust, providing an explanation for the inconsistent findings of previous studies.     

Changes in the world income distribution

Drawing on new international comparison estimates for 127 nations, this study examines in some detail for the decinnial years 1950–1980 the world size distribution of income. Different income concepts—national output valued in different ways, and also consumption alone; and income per-equivalent adult as well as per capita—have been considered in judging how world inequality has changed. The principal findings are: (i) at a point in time, the intercountry differences in income—differences among nations—are greater than the usually observed intracountry differences in income—differences within nations; and (ii) over time systematic differences in national economic growth rates of countries led on balance to very slightly increased intercountry inequality (quite possible not beyond the margin of measurement error) but that (and this judgment is quite tentative) the changes in intracountry inequality over time have left inequality in the overall distribution unchanged.     

Gender differences in income inequality among immigrant populations to the United States

This work examines the level of income inequality of immigrants to the United States. We separately examine income inequality of males and females using several different inequality measures for robustness. The work finds that males have the traditional inverted “U” relationship between inequality and growth but females have the opposite. These differences are caused by several key factors but mainly due to the level of work force participation of the two groups. Finally, we examine the differences in inequality between immigrants who have been in the country for a decade and newly arrived immigrants finding that income inequality is much greater for new immigrants.     

Reducing Inequality in Childcare Service Use across European Countries: What (if any) Is the role of Social Spending?

Childcare services are increasingly put forward as one of the most important policy levers to combat poverty and inequality. However, higher income families use childcare services to a much larger extent than lower income families. Almost all European countries increased expenditures on childcare over the past years, but has an ever‐increasing public spending on childcare provision led to more equality in its use? In this article, the relationship between spending and childcare use as well as between spending and inequality in childcare use over the period 2006–12 is empirically analyzed using a random effects model drawing on country‐level panel data (n = 156), derived from the EU‐SILC and OECD SOCX databases. Since governments can spend money in different ways, it is discussed whether a public or a market‐based strategy to subsidize childcare provision is related to more equality. The results suggest that more spending leads to higher levels of childcare use, but not directly to lower levels of inequality. For achieving equity in childcare use, government investment should lead to an expansion of childcare places across the income distribution. The findings allow the formulation of new hypotheses regarding the role of the private market in childcare services provision.     

Globalization and income inequality: Implications for intellectual property rights

This paper examines the impact of globalization on income inequality for a cross-section of 62 developing countries over a period of 17 years (1985–2001). The results of the study indicate that globalization explains only 15% of the variance in income inequality. More specifically, the results show that (1) strengthening intellectual property rights and openness are positively correlated with income inequality; (2) foreign direct investment is negative and significantly correlated with income inequality but this is not robust to different model specifications; (3) the institutional infrastructure is negatively correlated with income inequality. The study's findings and the review of the literature suggest that globalization has both costs and benefits and that the opportunity for economic gains can be best realized within an environment that supports and promotes sound and credible government institutions, education and technological development.     

Inequality, income, and poverty: comparative global evidence

Objectives. The study seeks to provide comparative global evidence on the role of income inequality, relative to income growth, in poverty reduction.Methods. An analysis-of-covariance model is estimated using a large global sample of 1980–2004 unbalanced panel data, with the headcount measure of poverty as the dependent variable, and the Gini coefficient and PPP-adjusted mean income as explanatory variables. Both random-effects and fixed-effects methods are employed in the estimation.Results. The responsiveness of poverty to income is a decreasing function of inequality, and the inequality elasticity of poverty is actually larger than the income elasticity of poverty. Furthermore, there is a large variation across regions (and countries) in the relative effects of inequality on poverty.Conclusion. Income distribution plays a more important role than might be traditionally acknowledged in poverty reduction, though this importance varies widely across regions and countries.