中国城镇家庭户收入和财产不平等:1995～2002

利用中国家庭户收入调查收集的1995年和2002年城镇家庭户样本数据,以家庭户作为分析单位,对中国城镇收入和财产不平等进行了考察。数据分析结果表明:中国城镇家庭户收入的大多数不平等测量指标在1995～2002年7年间都存在一个显著的大幅度上升,但家庭户财产不平等在此期间呈现出略有下降的趋势;基于人口分组的分解反映出,区域、户主受教育程度和户主中共党员身份对总的家庭收入和财产不平等具有更大的贡献;总体上,对于1995～2002年的中国城镇而言,分类机制在左右家庭户资源不平等变动中扮演着更为重要的角色。     

Measuring socioeconomic status in health research in developing countries: Should we be focusing on households,communities or both?

Research on the effects of socioeconomic well-being on health is important for policy makers in developing countries, where limited resources make it crucial to use existing health care resources to the best advantage. This paper develops and tests a set of measures of socioeconomic status indicators for predicting health status in developing countries. We construct socioeconomic indexes that capture both household and community attributes so as to allow us to separate the social from the purely economic dimensions of the socioeconomic status within a cross-national perspective, with applications to data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) fielded in five African countries in the 1990s. This study demonstrates the distinctive contributions of socioeconomic indexes measured at the household vs. community level in understanding inequalities in health and survival and underlines the importance of going beyond the purely economic view of socioeconomic status to cover the multidimensional as well as multilevel concept of economic and social inequality.     

An Agricultural Wealth Index for Multidimensional Wealth Assessments

Social scientists have increasingly used asset‐based wealth scores, like the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) wealth index, to assess economic disparities. However, current indices primarily capture wealth in globalized market economies, thus ignoring other forms of prosperity, such as success in agricultural activities. Using a simple extension to the standard estimation of the DHS wealth index, we describe procedures for estimating an agricultural wealth index (AWI) that complements market‐based wealth indices by capturing household success in agricultural activities. We apply this procedure to household data from 129 DHS surveys from over 40 countries with sufficient land and livestock data to estimate a reliable and consistent AWI. We assess the construct validity of the AWI using benchmarks of growth in both adults and children. This alternative measure of wealth provides new opportunities for understanding the causes and consequences of wealth inequality, and how success along different dimensions of wealth creates different social opportunities and constraints for health and well‐being.     

Inequality, Wealth and Health: Is Decreasing Income Inequality the Key to Create Healthier Societies?

The idea that the level of stratification of societies contributes to the well-being of their members is gaining popularity. We contribute to this debate by investigating whether reducing inequalities in the income distribution of societies is a strategy for improving population health, especially appropriate for those countries that have reached the limits of economic growth. We test this idea on a dataset covering 140 countries and 2360 country-year observation between 1987 and 2008 and formulate hypotheses separately for countries with different level of economic development. We indeed found that countries with higher levels of income inequality also have lower levels of life expectancy (our measure of population health), and this result was consistent both in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. However, the relationship was found only among low- and middle-developed countries. In the group of high-developed countries, the relationship between income inequality and life expectancy was non-significant, which contradicts the literature. Expectations on the relationship between a country’s wealth and health were confirmed: economic growth does contribute to improving population health, but this effect is weaker in more economically developed countries. These results imply that a decrease in a country’s income inequality parallel with an increase in its wealth can help to improve health in economically lesser-developed countries, but not in high-developed countries.     

Change of Housing Inequality in Urban China and Its Decomposition: 1989–2011

Housing inequality is a common phenomenon all over the world but also demonstrate discrepant tinctures across different countries. Using the data from the China Health and Nutrition Surveys, we depict a comprehensive, dynamic, and complex picture of housing inequality in urban China from 1989 to 2011, with household as the unit of analysis. Analytic results from calculation of housing Gini coefficients and delineation of housing Lorenz curves suggest that the trend of housing space inequality was steady with a somewhat increase, while that of housing wealth inequality has firstly decreased and then increased. Through further decomposition on the change of housing inequality with a pioneering use of MM decomposition method, we find that the change of the composition of household characteristics only could explain few about the change of housing inequality, while the classification mechanism formed by returns from household characteristics plays a key role in both the change of housing space inequality and that of housing wealth inequality.

     

Support for democracy in cross-national perspective: The detrimental effect of economic inequality

Using survey data and national statistics on 35 modern democracies, this research explores the relationship between economic and political conditions and support for democracy. As expected from modernization theory, support for democracy tends to be highest in countries with a high level of economic development. More importantly, however, I contribute a new finding that income inequality matters much more. Specifically, citizens from countries with relatively low levels of income inequality tend to be more likely than others to support democracy. I also find that household income is positively related to support for democracy in most countries, though it tends to have its strongest effect if economic development is high and income inequality is low. Finally, even after taking into account the level of economic development in one's country, people from former Communist countries tend to have far less support for democracy than those from more established democracies.     

Does race matter? Children's height in Brazil and South Africa

I examine racial differences in child stunting in mid-1990s South Africa and Brazil, two multiracial societies with different histories of legal support for racial discrimination. Using data from nationally representative household samples linked to community-level measures, the analysis shows that racial inequality in the distribution of socioeconomic resources across households and communities explains much of the racial difference in stunting in both countries. Even after these factors are controlled, however, the results indicate that in South Africa, nonwhite children are still at greater risk of growth faltering than are white children. The nature of socioeconomic and racial differences in children's growth is examined, and major determinants are discussed. These findings suggest that although state-sanctioned racism may help to explain the greater racial inequality in stunting in South Africa than in Brazil, the eradication of a disadvantage for nonwhites will depend on changes in the same fundamental socioeconomic inequalities that characterize both nations.     

Slum Residence and Child Health in Developing Countries

Continued population growth and increasing urbanization have led to the formation of large informal urban settlements in many developing countries in recent decades. The high prevalence of poverty, overcrowding, and poor sanitation observed in these settlements—commonly referred to as “slums”—suggests that slum residence constitutes a major health risk for children. In this article, we use data from 191 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) across 73 developing countries to investigate this concern empirically. Our results indicate that children in slums have better health outcomes than children living in rural areas yet fare worse than children in better-off neighborhoods of the same urban settlements. A large fraction of the observed health differences appears to be explained by pronounced differences in maternal education, household wealth, and access to health services across residential areas. After we control for these characteristics, children growing up in the slums and better-off neighborhoods of towns show levels of morbidity and mortality that are not statistically different from those of children living in rural areas. Compared with rural children, children living in cities (irrespective of slum or formal residence) fare better with respect to mortality and stunting but not with respect to recent illness episodes.     

The Marriage Wealth Premium Revisited: Gender Disparities and Within-Individual Changes in Personal Wealth in Germany

This study examines the association between marriage and economic wealth of women and men. Going beyond previous research that focused on household wealth, I examine personal wealth, which allows identifying gender disparities in the association between marriage and wealth. Using unique data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (2002, 2007, and 2012), I apply random-effects and fixed-effects regression models to test my expectations. I find that both women and men experience substantial marriage wealth premiums not only in household wealth but also in personal wealth. However, I do not find consistent evidence for gender disparities in these general marriage premiums. Additional analyses indicate, however, that women’s marriage premiums are substantially lower than men’s premiums in older cohorts and when only nonhousing wealth is considered. Overall, this study provides new evidence that women and men gain unequally in their wealth attainment through marriage.     

The polarizing effect of economic inequality on class identification: Evidence from 44 countries

Using cumulative logit mixed models fitted to World Values Survey data from 44 countries, we explore the impact of economic conditions – both at the individual-level and the national-level – on social class identification. Consistent with previous research, we find a positive relationship between household income and class identification in all countries that we explore, though this relationship varies substantially. Also corroborating previous research, we find that ‘low’ class identifications are more likely in poor countries than in rich ones. However, in contrast to previous research that has neglected the role of inequality, our results indicate that the effect of economic development diminishes if income inequality is considered in the same model. We further demonstrate that income inequality has an important polarizing effect on class identification. Specifically, the relationship between household income and class identity tends to be strongest in countries with a high level of income inequality.     

Household Budgets as a Social Indicator of Poverty and Inequality in South Africa

In the absence of a universally accepted method of calculating poverty, household expenditure can be used to provide an indication of inequality of wealth and serve as an indicator of poverty. Household expenditure comprises expenditure of private households on goods and services, irrespective of their durability. The portion of household budgets allocated to different types of goods and services provides an indication of the material standard of living of a population. The article discusses different definitions of poverty and compares the state of poverty according to these definitions in selected countries. This is followed by an analysis of South Africa’s economic position in the world and a comparison of the household budgets and demographic profile of South African households that fall into different income groups in order to identify the differences between the poorest and the wealthiest households in South Africa. Income inequality in South Africa is further elucidated by means of the Gini coefficient. A comparison is also made between the household budgets of the poorest households with the minimum financial living level requirements in South Africa to maintain their health and have acceptable standards of hygiene and sufficient clothing for their needs.     

Measures and meaning in comparisons of wealth equlality

How communities distribute wealth is one aspect for judging the performance of economic systems. Many inequality measures exist. Precentiles, Gini coefficients, and statistical pattern measures each rest on different concepts about what equality and inequality mean. Wealth distribution data from 55 communities are compared relative to Gini coefficient, kurtosis, and coefficient of variation. These data show no community with perfect equality. Most communities have some inequality. The general pattern is for wealth inequality to increase with the development of market and mechanized industrial economies.     

Socioeconomic Inequalities in Infant Mortality in Egypt: Analyzing Trends Between 1995 and 2014

This paper analyses the trend of the socioeconomic inequalities in infant mortality rates in Egypt over the period 1995–2014, using repeated cross-sectional data from the National Demographic and Health Survey. A multivariate logistic regression and concentration indices are used to examine the demographic and socioeconomic correlates of infant mortality, and how the degree of socioeconomic disparities in child mortality rates has evolved over time. We find a significant drop in infant mortality rates from 63 deaths per 1000 live births in 1995 to 22 deaths per 1000 live births in 2014. However, analyzing trends over the study period reveals no corresponding progress in narrowing the socioeconomic disparities in childhood mortality. Infant mortality rates remain higher in rural areas and among low-income families than the national average. Results show an inverse association between infant mortality rates and living standard measures, with the poor bearing the largest burden of early child mortality. Though the estimated concentration indices show a decline in the degree of socioeconomic inequality in child mortality rates over time, infant mortality rate among the poor remains twice the rate of the richest wealth quintile. Nonetheless, this decline in the degree of socioeconomic inequality in child mortality is not supported by the results of the multivariate logistic regression model. Results of the logistic model show higher odds of infant mortality among rural households, children who are twins, households with risky birth intervals. We find no statistically significant association between infant mortality and child’s sex, access to safe water, mothers’ work, and mothers’ nutritional status. Infant mortality is negatively associated with household wealth and regular health care during pregnancy. Concerted effort and targeting intervention measures are still needed to reduce the degree of socioeconomic and regional inequalities in child health, including infant mortality, in Egypt.     

The gender wealth gap:structural and material constraints and implications for later life

Wealth is an important measure of economic well-being, because while income captures the current state of inequality, wealth has the potential for examining accumulated and historically structured inequality. This presentation documents the extent of gender inequality in wealth for Canadian women and men aged 45 and older. The analysis uses data from the 1999 Canadian Survey of Financial Security, a large nationally representative survey of household wealth in Canada. Wealth is measured by total net worth as measured by total assets minus debt. We test two general hypotheses to account for gender differences in wealth. The differential exposure hypothesis suggests that women report less wealth accumulation because of their reduced access to the material and social conditions of life that foster economic security. The differential vulnerability hypothesis suggests that women report lower levels of wealth because they receive differential returns to material and social conditions of their lives. Support is found for both hypotheses. Much of the gender differences in wealth can be explained by the gendering of work and family roles that restricts women's ability to build up assets over the life course. But beyond this, there are significant gender interaction effects that indicate that women are further penalized by their returns to participation in family life, their health and where they live. When women do work, net of other factors, they are better able to accumulate wealth than their male counterparts.     

Health,Wealth and Wisdom: Exploring Multidimensional Inequality in a Developing Country

Despite a broad theoretical literature on multidimensional inequality and a widespread belief that welfare is not synonymous to income—not the least in a developing context—empirical inequality examinations rarely includes several welfare attributes. We explore three techniques on how to evaluate multidimensional inequality using Zambian household data on consumption, education, health and land. The examination indicates that level and changes in non-monetary inequality are at odds with consumption inequality. Moreover, assessment of a multidimensional index shows evidence of that dimensions of wellbeing compensate and reinforce each other with respect to inequality. However, a majority of the results using this technique are sensitive to the degree of substitution between attributes. In applying a stochastic dominance method few combinations fulfill the required dominance conditions. Accordingly, less imposed structure come at a cost. Clearly, sensitivity analyzes, explicitness and analyzes involving more than one technique are constructive in portraying multidimensional inequality.     

Adult height and childhood disease

Taller populations are typically richer populations, and taller individuals live longer and earn more. In consequence, adult height has recently become a focus in understanding the relationship between health and wealth. We investigate the childhood determinants of population adult height, focusing on the respective roles of income and of disease. Across a range of European countries and the United States, we find a strong inverse relationship between postneonatal (ages 1 month to 1 year) mortality, interpreted as a measure of the disease and nutritional burden in childhood, and the mean height of those children as adults. Consistent with these findings, we develop a model of selection and stunting in which the early-life burden of undernutrition and disease not only is responsible for mortality in childhood but also leaves a residue of long-term health risks for survivors, risks that express themselves in adult height and in late-life disease. The model predicts that at sufficiently high mortality levels, selection can dominate scarring, leaving a taller population of survivors. We find evidence of this effect in the poorest and highest-mortality countries of the world, supplementing recent findings on the effects of the Great Chinese Famine.     

A Cross-National Analysis of Lifespan Inequality, 1950–2015: Examining the Distribution of Mortality Within Countries

Cross-national health research devotes considerable attention to lifespan and survival rate disparities that are found between countries. However, the distribution of mortality across the world is shaped mostly by what happens within countries. We address this striking gap in the literature by modeling length-of-life inequality for individual nation-states. We use life tables from the United Nation’s (2015) World Population Prospects to estimate inequality levels for 200 countries across 13 waves between 1950 and 2015. We find that lifespan inequality is steadily declining across the world, but that each country’s level of inequality, and the rate at which it declines, vary considerably. Our models account for more than 90% of the longitudinal and cross-sectional variation in country-level lifespan inequality during the 1990–2015 period. Maternal mortality is the strongest predictor in our model, while disease prevalence, access to safe water, and health interventions figure prominently, as well. Gross domestic product per capita shows the expected curvilinear association with lifespan inequality, while primary education (both overall enrollment and gender equity in enrollment), external debt, and migration also play critical roles in shaping health outcomes. By contrast, the distribution of political and economic resources (i.e., democracy and income inequality) is less important.

     

Trends in socioeconomic inequalities in mortality in developing countries: The case of child Survival in São Paulo,Brazil*

I examined trends in socioeconomic inequalities in under-five mortality for the state of São Paulo, Brazil, over a 21-year period from 1970 to 1991, during which much of the mortality transition unfolded. During this time, there was a decline in inequality in under-five mortality by household wealth but a substantial increase by mother’s education. Improvements in infrastructure and economic development were associated with lower levels of socioeconomic inequality in under-five mortality. Mother’s education emerged as the key factor underlying socioeconomic inequalities in under-five mortality even as levels of education for women increased and inequality in schooling fell.     

Relative Economic Position and Subjective Well-Being in a Poor Society: Does Relative Position Indicator Matter?

Concern for relative income (or status in general) may have important implications for poverty and individual well-being. This paper examines the impact of relative economic position on individual’s level of well-being among poor communities in rural Ethiopia. The analysis uses a self-reported measure of overall life-evaluation as a measure of individual well-being. Despite the fact that well-being is multidimensional, the impact of non-money metric measures of relative economic position on individual well-being has not been given a lot of attention in the literature. In this study, relative economic position is measured using consumption data, asset index, and respondent’s own perception of relative wealth. The asset index captures the non-monetary dimensions of economic welfare, including education, physical assets, and social capital. We use data from the 2004 and 2009 waves of the Ethiopia Rural Household Survey and employ a multilevel modelling technique to account for individual and group level heterogeneity in our empirical analysis. We find no significant relationship between individual well-being and relative economic position measured with in consumption terms. In contrast, we do find a significant negative impact of relative position on individual well-being when we use asset indices and respondent’s own perception of relative wealth to measure relative economic position. Our findings suggest that when individuals compare themselves with others, they evaluate various aspects of their life, including their financial conditions, asset holdings, and social relations, which are hardly captured by consumption or income data in many poor countries.     

Rural–Urban Child Height for Age Trajectories and Their Heterogeneous Determinants in Four Developing Countries

The large literature on health differentials between rural and urban areas relies almost exclusively on cross-sectional data. Bringing together the demographic literature on area-level health inequalities with the bio-physiological literature on children’s catch-up growth over time, this paper uses panel data to investigate the stability and origins of rural–urban health differentials. Using data from the Young Lives longitudinal study of child poverty, I present evidence of large level differences but similar trends in rural versus urban children’s height for age in four developing countries. Further, observable characteristics of children’s environment such as their household wealth, mother’s education, and epidemiological environment explain these differentials in most contexts. In Peru, where they do not, children’s birthweight and mothers’ health and other characteristics suggest that initial endowments—even before birth—may play an important role in explaining "residual" rural–urban child height inequalities. These latter results imply that prioritizing maternal nutrition and health is essential—particularly where rural–urban height inequalities are large. Interventions to reduce area-level health inequalities should begin even before birth.