Biased networks and social structure theorems

It is shown that the part of Peter Blau's theory of social structure bearing on heterogeneity can be imbedded within the framework of biased networks, thereby clarifying conceptual aspects of the theory as well as providing a mathematical proof of the most central heterogeneity theorem for a class of networks. The key step is the postulation of a mathematical concept of salience, called an ‘inbreeding bias’ in prior work, which corresponds to Blau's fundamental axiom. In addition, there are derivations and discussions bearing on related topics in the analysis of social structure.     

Random and biased networks: simulations and approximations

Work by Rapoport and his colleagues in the 1950s and early 1960s developed the idea of biased/random nets as a theory of social network structure. It aims to explain variation in aggregate network patterns by appeal to differences in local properties affecting linkages between nodes and how these differences cascade to affect the overall structure of the total network. While the theory is set out mathematically and uses formal logic to analyze the general model, the complexity of the compound outcome makes exact theory impossible. Consequently, plausible approximations and approximation formulas are used to link up the local properties to global structure. Research reported in this paper attempts to check these approximations through simulation studies. Programs are developed which generate specific networks over a reasonably large (S=100) population consistent with certain parametric specifciations which govern (coal patterns of connection. Properties of these networks are then compared with those predicted from the approximation arguments in an effort to refine those arguments to the point at which they can be used with confidence in other theoretical inquiries, such as recent applications of biased net theory to Blau's influential ideas on the social structural determinants of relational patterns.     

MEASURING AND ANALYZING CLASS INEQUALITY WITH THE GINI INDEX INFORMED BY MODEL-BASED CLUSTERING

The most widely used measure for studying social, economic, and health inequality is the Gini index/ratio. Whereas other measures of inequality possess certain useful characteristics, such as the straightforward decomposability of the generalized entropy measures, the Gini index has remained the most popular, at least in part due to its ease of interpretation. However, the Gini index has a limitation in measuring inequality. It is less sensitive to how the population is stratified than how individual values differ. The twin purposes of this paper are to explain the limitation and to propose a model-based method—latent class/clustering analysis for understanding and measuring inequality. The latent cluster approach has the major advantage of being able to identify potential "classes" of individuals who share similar levels of income or one or more other attributes and to assess the fit of the model-based classes to the empirical data, based on different cluster distributional assumptions and the number of latent classes. This paper distinguishes class inequality from individual inequality, the type that is better captured by the Gini. Once the classes are estimated, the membership of estimated classes obtained from the best fitting model facilitates the decomposition of the Gini index into individual and class inequality. Class inequality is then measured by two relative stratification indices based on either the relative size of the Gini between-class components or the relative number of stratified individuals. Therefore, the Gini index is extended and assisted by model-based clustering to measure class inequality, thereby realizing its great potential for studying inequality. Income data from France and Hungary are used to illustrate the application of the method.     

Measuring inequality of opportunity through between-group inequality components

Opportunity egalitarians support rich-to-poor redistribution whenever this allows for the compensation of income disparities due to non-responsible choices (circumstances). In this paper we focus on the measurement of opportunity inequality within Roemer’s (Philos Public Aff 22:146–166, 1993) pragmatic theory where a disjoint and exhaustive partition rule is assumed such that individuals within the same population can be grouped depending on the sole circumstances. Given entropy-based, deprivation-based and welfaristic inequality decomposition procedures, we show that the between-group Gini component from Dagum’s decomposition is the only well known between-group inequality index satisfying the Pigou-Dalton principle of transfer as reformulated for opportunity egalitarianism.     

Hypernetwork sampling: Duality and differentiation among voluntary organizations

One of the recurrent problems in the study of social organization is that survey researchers are forced to study individuals, while they are often interested in hypotheses about organizations or systems of organizations. This paper offers some methods which allow survey researchers to address hypotheses about the relations generated among individuals by organizations, the organizations themselves, and the relations among organizations. Estimators are developed for the number and size distribution of organizations in communities, the density of relations among individuals generated by organizations, the number and density of interorganizational linkages, and the amount of membership overlap among organizations. This approach combines Granovetter's idea of network sampling with Breiger's notion of the duality of persons and groups to produce a quantitative approach to the study of voluntary organization. We provide an illustration of the methods we develop by testing two of Blau's structural hypotheses on data concerning voluntary organizations. The hypotheses that structural differentiation increases with system size and that this increase is at a decreasing rate are strongly supported. The paper closes with some suggestions for further elaborations of the hypernetwork approach.     

Inequality measurement and the time structure of household income in Israel

The aim of this paper is to empirically evaluate the effect of the length of the accounting period on indices of inequality of household income in Israel. There are three main findings: (1) The analysis of the impact of the accounting period on the Gini index of inequality can be done in a way which is identical to analyzing the effect of the accounting period on the coefficient of variation; (2) changing the accounting period from one to three months decreases, on average, the Gini index of inequality by about 1.7%. Furthermore, the Gini index calculated from a three-month accounting period was 3.9%–4.1% higher than the index based on a 12-month period. The change in the accounting period from 12 months to three months accounts for 27% to 37% of the increase in inequality in the last two decades, depending on the type of income considered. (3) The above relationship is stable over the years but is sensitive to the definition of income.     

Marital Well‐being and Religiousness as Mediated by Relational Virtue and Equality

This study investigated religiousness and couple well‐being as mediated by relational virtue and equality. Relational spiritual framework theory posits that religiousness is associated with couple well‐being through relational virtues (e.g., forgiveness, commitment, and sacrifice). Theories of relational inequality postulate that religion decreases couple well‐being and indirectly lessens couple well‐being. Data from a 3‐year longitudinal community sample of 354 married couples were used. The authors found that religiousness's relationship to couple well‐being was fully mediated by relational virtue but was not connected to relational inequality. They also found that relational inequality was associated with women's conflict, men's conflict, and marital instability. They did not find that higher religiousness benefits marital outcomes directly. Although these findings do not support the idea that religious activities are directly associated with stronger relationships, the data did show that religiousness can contribute to expressed relational virtue, and relational virtue in turn is associated with marital well‐being.     

Does income inequality harm health? New cross-national evidence

The provocative hypothesis that income inequality harms population health has sparked a large body of research, some of which has reported strong associations between income inequality and population health. Cross-national evidence is frequently cited in support of this important hypothesis, but the hypothesis remains controversial, and the cross-national work has been criticized for several methodological shortcomings. This study replicates previous work using a larger sample (692 observations from 115 countries over the 1947-1996 period), a wider range of statistical controls, and fixed-effects models that address heterogeneity bias. The relationship between health and inequality shrinks when controls are included. In fixed-effects models that capture unmeasured heterogeneity, the association between income inequality and health disappears. The null findings hold for two measures of income inequality: the Gini coefficient and the share of income received by the poorest quintile of the population. Analysis of a sample of wealthy countries also fails to support the hypothesis.     

The impact of unionization,right-to-work laws,and female labor force participation on earnings inequality across states

This study examines the effect of unionization, right-to-work laws, and participation of women in the labor force on income inequality. Two distinct models are developed using 1970 and 1980 census data on the 50 states in the U.S. First, an income inequality model is specified as a beta distribution of the second kind to estimate Gini measures of income inequality. Second, these Gini estimates are used in a simultaneous equations model. The 1970 results indicate that higher unionization rates decreased inequality while right-to-work laws increased inequality. In 1980, the measure of inequality was lower in states with higher female labor force participation. We thank an unknown referee and the editor for comments and criticisms that greatly improved the paper. The usual caveat applies.     

A general class of inequality elasticities of poverty

Many authors have recently emphasized the crucial role of income inequalities in the design of efficient policies aimed at reducing poverty. However, the link between variations in the degree of inequality and variations in poverty is not well documented. The literature, for instance, does not provide any satisfying tool for predicting how a small relative variation in the Gini index may be associated with a variation in the headcount index. In the present paper, we define a family of Lorenz curve transformations that can directly be interpreted in terms of relative variations of known inequality measures. Then, we extend Kakwani’s (Rev Income Wealth 39(2):121–139, 1993) methodology for the calculation of inequality elasticities of poverty. Improvements are threefold with respect to Kakwani’s work. First, our formulas are not confined to the sole Gini index. Secondly, they embrace the uncertainty and the complexity of the mechanical link between inequality and poverty. Third, using some flexible functional form, one can easily perform an accurate estimation of the point inequality elasticities of poverty corresponding to observed variations of a given income distribution. We also propose a simple measure that may be helpful to assess how “pro-poor” are inequality variations by comparing the observed elasticities with the set of theoretical elasticities that could be obtained from the initial income distribution.     

Decomposition properties of dual choice functionals

The Gini coefficient is a well-known measure of inequality, and it satisfies a non-overlapping additive decomposition property (Ebert 1988b). The Gini coefficient is related to the dual theory of choice, as developed by Yaari (1987, 1988). We determine which other dual choice functionals satisfy a non-overlapping additive decomposition property that is weaker than the additive one suggested in Ebert (1988b). It turns out that the only functionals that do are those that arise from the Lebesgue measure, the measure associated with the Gini coefficient, and degenerate delta functions. Received: 8 January 2001/Accepted: 22 February 2002 We thank the Actuarial Education and Research Fund for financial support of this project. We also thank anonymous referees for helpful comments.     

"A DUALISTIC VISION": ROBERT EZRA PARK AND THE CLASSICAL ECOLOGICAL THEORY OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY

Although struggle, domination, competition, and hierarchy were central concerns of Robert Park and the human ecologists during the 1920s and 1930s, they did not specifically set out to articulate a comprehensive theory of social inequality in their work. Indeed, the period of Chicago school dominance has been portrayed by some analysts as one during which sociologists for the most part ignored the study of social inequality. This article suggests, by contrast, that social inequality was a central focus of the human ecological perspective and outlines the basic assumptions, intellectual origins, components, structure, and logic of the classical ecological account of inequality.     

Performance pay,the marriage market and rising income inequality in Taiwan

Taiwan expanded its college access significantly over the past two decades by converting 2-year junior colleges to 4-year colleges and relaxing entrance standards. The share of college graduates in the 22–24 years old population rose from 12 to 71% between 1990 and 2014. This should have suppressed returns to schooling and lowered household income inequality. Instead, Taiwan’s Gini coefficient rose. We show that rising use of performance pay and positive assortative mating in the marriage market jointly increase the household income inequality by 46.5% between 1980 and 2014. Our results suggest that uneven quality of the most recent cohorts of college graduates led to two sources of rising household income inequality: the increased use of bonus pay which increases residual inequality among college graduates; and matching on unobserved skills in the marriage market which increases inequality among married couples.

     

Beyond Oaxaca–Blinder: Accounting for differences in household income distributions

This paper develops a method to decompose differences across distributions of household income, based on counterfactual distributions that ‘lie between’ the actually observed distributions. Our approach decomposes differences between any two income distributions (or functionals such as inequality or poverty measures) into shares due to price effects; occupational structure effects; and endowment effects. Comparing the household income distributions of the USA and Brazil in 1999, we find that most of Brazil’s excess inequality (of 13 Gini points) is accounted for by underlying inequalities in the distributions of education and of non-labor income, notably pensions (between four and six Gini points each). Steeper returns to education in Brazil also make an important contribution (of two to five points). Differences in occupational structure and in racial and demographic composition are much less important. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Generalized Gini Indices of Equality of Opportunity

This article considers the ranking of profiles of opportunity sets on the basis of their equality. A version of the Pigou–Dalton transfer principle that is appropriate for the measurement of opportunity inequality is introduced and used to axiomatize the class of generalized Gini equality of opportunity orderings. A characterization of the class of generalized Gini social preference orderings for opportunity profiles is also provided.     

The moral middle-class in market socialism: An investigation into the personhood of women working in NGOs in Vietnam

The paper uncovers the values that Vietnamese women produce and accumulate from the NGO sector to acquire a morality central to their middle-class identity. They present an idea of a moral middle-class that conforms to the neoliberal criteria of self-reliance and self-optimisation within the economic segment, in which values are generated in the forms of sacrifice and giving away. I argue that this idea is associated with a mode of governmentality whereby the socialist state shapes the moral subject for the sake of governance in the context of marketisation. Morality, as a governing device, motivates and polices women's compliance with their subordinate position. This paper presents findings that illustrate the slipperiness of the notion of middle-class between theories and practices and from women's perspectives. Perceived in part in terms of women's sacrifices, this study illustrates how middle-class identity is negotiated through moral, gender and class divisions in a post-socialist society.     

Gini’s nuclear family

The purpose of this paper is to justify the use of the Gini coefficient and two close relatives for summarizing the basic information of inequality in distributions of income. To this end we employ a specific transformation of the Lorenz curve, the scaled conditional mean curve, rather than the Lorenz curve as the basic formal representation of inequality in distributions of income. The scaled conditional mean curve is shown to possess several attractive properties as an alternative interpretation of the information content of the Lorenz curve and furthermore proves to yield essential information on polarization in the population. The paper also provides asymptotic distribution results for the empirical scaled conditional mean curve and the related family of empirical measures of inequality.      

Gender inequality and inter-household economic inequality in emerging economies: exploring the relationship

While most emerging economies have been characterised by persistence/growth of inter-household economic inequality in recent decades, and simultaneous poor performance on gender equality, the intersecting relationship between these two trends so far has not received much attention. This article is an initial attempt look at this relationship, showing how gender inequality has both contributed to, and been affected by, growing economic inequality. It focuses on eight emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey (dubbed the BRICSAMIT countries). The article analyses Gini coefficient trends and Global Gender Gap Index trends, and draws in addition on insights gained from seven exploratory interviews with Oxfam colleagues and partners working on women's rights in the considered countries. It concludes with a reflection on the possible future policy agenda that would allow one to simultaneously address the issues of gender inequality and economic inequality in the analysed countries.     

Theorizing the relationship between inequality and economic growth

This article explores a promising theoretical approach for reassessing the relationship between inequality and economic growth. The article draws some insights from the influential inverted U-curve hypothesis originally advanced by Simon Kuznets, but drastically recasts the original arguments by shifting two fundamental premises. First, retaining Kuznets’s emphasis on the importance of economic growth in generating demographic transitions between existing and new distributional arrays, we argue that a “constant drive toward inequality” results after replacing a Schumpeterian notion of “creative destruction” for the dualistic assumptions in Kuznets’s model. Second, while Kuznets devoted considerable attention to the impact of institutions on distributional outcomes, we argue that institutions should be understood as relational and global mechanisms of regulation, operating within countries while simultaneously shaping interactions and flows between nations. The article argues that economic growth, unfolding through institutions embedded in time and space, produces a constant drive towards inequality that results in a multiple and overlapping matrix of distributional arrays, an overall income distribution (e.g., within and between countries) that is both systemic and historical.