中国农村收入、收入差距和健康

本文利用2004年和2006年中国9个省份的家庭调查面板数据,研究收入、相对收入和农村居民健康之间的关系。发现健康状况随着个人收入的增加而改善,呈现出明显的非线性关系;收入差距对健康的滞后影响,呈现倒U型关系。此外,当基尼系数在0.387以下时,农村居民健康水平将会随着基尼系数的扩大而改善,当收入差距进一步扩大时,健康水平将受到损害。而数据显示68%的农村居民在倒U右侧,健康正受到扩大的收入差距侵蚀。     

中国的失业、贫困与收入分配差距

文章利用1999年住户抽样调查和2000年人口普查数据来推算城市失业率、贫困率及基尼系数,并预测今后收入分配的变化趋势。研究结果发现:(1)城市失业率较政府公布值高出近3倍,特别是“下岗失业”问题尤为突出。(2)城市贫困问题日益严重,并已成为加剧城市收入不平等的原因之一。(3)城市与农村间的收入差距不但没有缩小,反而在持续扩大。(4)居民的收入分配在持续恶化。文章还指出,依据库兹涅茨曲线分析,中国尚处于基尼系数上升时期,因而在达到峰值之前收入差距还会扩大,这有可能成为社会和政治不安定的因素。     

Income Inequality and Persistence Changes

Social Indicators Research - This paper carries out a time series analysis of the Gini coefficient for disposable income in a sample that includes both advanced and emerging economies. Our results...     

Urbanization,Economic Structure,Political Regime,and Income Inequality

Social Indicators Research - The study examined the effect of urbanization on income inequality for 21 Sub Saharan African countries over the period 1984–2014 using heterogeneous panel...     

Education Expansion, Educational Inequality, and Income Inequality: Evidence from Taiwan, 1976–2003

The expansion of higher education in Taiwan starting from the late 1980s has successfully raised the average level of education. Using the concept of the education Gini, we find that the educational inequality declined as average schooling rose during the period of 1976–2003. The impacts of a rising average schooling and a declining educational inequality are also tested empirically in this paper. The evidence supports that a higher level of average schooling will generate a lower income inequality. On the other hand, a lower educational inequality, as measured by education Gini coefficient, will also cause a lower income inequality. Skill-biased technological change that shifts the labor demand from unskilled workers toward skilled workers is the most likely cause for the rising income inequality in Taiwan. However, the trend of rising income inequality could be reversed due to possible future over-education and unemployment in the labor market.     

Relative Income, Inequality and Subjective Wellbeing: Evidence for Brazil

This paper analyzes the determinants of the self-reported income and food sufficiency in Brazil, highlighting how these subjective measures of wellbeing are affected by relative conditions. Analyses are based on pooled data from the 2002/2003 and 2008/2009 Brazilian Family Budget Survey and on estimates of the multinomial relation between income and food sufficiency with absolute and relative indicators. The paper highlights that living in a more affluent neighborhood does matter in self-reported perceptions of wellbeing. Stated income sufficiency depends positively on absolute family income and negatively on relative neighbor income. Moreover, neighborhood education and regional inequality affect both stated perceptions of income and food sufficiency. The paper concludes that improving personal income and education, as well as reducing inequality, is one of the most effective ways to improve both the quality of life and the general perceptions of wellbeing in society.     

Educational Assortative Mating and Income Inequality in Denmark

Many writers have expressed a concern that growing educational assortative mating will lead to greater inequality between households in their earnings or income. In this article, we examine the relationship between educational assortative mating and income inequality in Denmark between 1987 and 2006. Denmark is widely known for its low level of income inequality, but the Danish case provides a good test of the relationship between educational assortative mating and inequality because although income inequality increased over the period we consider, educational homogamy declined. Using register data on the exact incomes of the whole population, we find that change in assortative mating increased income inequality but that these changes were driven by changes in the educational distributions of men and women rather than in the propensity for people to choose a partner with a given level of education.     

Probing Institutional Quality Through Ethnic Diversity,Income Inequality and Public Spending

Social Indicators Research - We measure performance change for the educational systems of 28 countries which participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in years 2007...     

Convergence in Income Inequality Across Australian States and Territories

Social Indicators Research - An increasing volume of literature has shown that economic freedom is related to life satisfaction. However, life satisfaction may not fully describe well-being because...     

Socioeconomic Status,Income Inequality,and Health Complaints: A Basic Psychological Needs Perspective

Socioeconomic status (SES) and income inequality are now recognized as important determinants of health, and there is growing interest in uncovering the intermediary psychosocial pathways through which the socioeconomic context affects physical well-being (Marmot in The status syndrome: how social standing affects our health and longevity, Henry Holt, New York, 2004; Wilkinson and Pickett in The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better, Allen Lane, London, 2009). We adopted the applied framework of self-determination theory (SDT; Deci and Ryan in Psychol Inq 11:227–268, 2000) and hypothesized that fulfillment of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness would mediate the relationships that SES and income inequality have to self-rated health. An online community sample of American participants (N = 1,139) completed a detailed demographic survey and provided self-reports of need fulfillment and health complaints. Structural equation models controlled for impression management and self-deceptive enhancement. Controlling for sex and age, need fulfillment was predicted positively by subjective SES and objective household income and negatively by state-level income inequality; in turn, need fulfillment predicted lower levels of health complaints. These findings suggest that SDT provides a useful framework for the study of SES, income inequality, and health, and that basic psychological needs are an important mechanism through which socioeconomic contexts influence health.     

Erratum to: Does National Income Inequality Affect Individuals’ Quality of Life in Europe? Inequality,Happiness, Finances,and Health

Social Indicators Research -     

农民工汇款与家庭收入不平等:基于反事实收入的分析

本文利用来自于农村劳动力输出大省湖北省的调研数据来考察农民工汇款对输出地家庭收入不平等的影响。研究结果表明,当我们简单将农民工汇款看成外生的转移收入时,农民工汇款能改善农村家庭的收入不平等状况。不过,当考虑到农村劳动力外出务工的选择性,并通过引入工具变量来构建那些外出劳动力户的反事实收入时,我们会得到相反的结论:由于那些外出务工劳动力往往来自于经济状况较好的家庭,农民工汇款扩大了农村家庭的收入不平等状况,家庭人均收入的基尼系数从反事实收入情形下的0.3551上升至实际收入情形下的0.3774。     

Income Inequality in Latin America: Data Challenges and Availability

This article discusses the main challenges faced by nowadays researchers when measuring income inequality in Latin America. The discussion is articulated around the two main approaches to summarize the distributional problem: factor and personal inequality. The article underlines the difficulties, mainly imposed by data availability for inequality measurement under both of them. The article proposes specific lines to advance in the improvement of data quality and availability for inequality measurement (and understanding) in the region.     

我国城乡居民收入差距的影响因素分析

本文对我国城乡居民收入差距的主要解释变量作了定量研究,认为农业与二、三产业比较劳动生产率的不断扩大是造成城乡收入差距不断扩大的最重要原因,农村居民与城市居民人力资本的差距拉大是根本的原因,过去若干年来所推进的就业结构转变和城市化,客观上起到了拉大城乡收入差距的作用,而政府财政支出对城乡差距的扩大起到了一定的遏制效果。本文对这种现象进行了理论解释,提出了政府在城乡政策制定上应注意把握的问题。     

Income Inequality,Distributive Justice Beliefs,and Happiness in China: Evidence from a Nationwide Survey

Social Indicators Research - Recently, increasing numbers of scholars have given attention to the mechanism connecting income inequality and happiness. This paper uses a multilevel model to verify...     

人口特征对收入分配的影响研究——基于深圳和重庆数据的分析

使用深圳市和重庆市两座城市2005年7月的居民抽样调查数据,运用基于人口特征的收入差距群体分解方法对两市的收入分配结构进行了对比研究。研究发现,虽然深圳市的城市居民收入分配差距大于重庆市,但一些代表个人身份的特征,如城市户籍、民族等因素,在深圳市城市居民收入分配中的作用却明显小于重庆市。在两座城市,就业行业和受教育程度是影响城市居民收入分配差距最主要的因素。由于就业行业与受教育水平密切相关,因此,在经济发展过程中不断加强教育投入,强化教育资源的均等化,防止受教育机会不平等的出现和扩大,对于防范中国经济由收入分配不公带来的风险意义重大。     

收入增长、不平等和贫困——中国健康与营养调查数据分析

文章利用中国8个省的调查数据,研究了城市和农村在1989~2004年间经济增长、收入不平等和减贫之间的关系.分析结果表明,城乡收入水平在这一期间有了引人注目的改善,在很大程度上降低了贫困率.沿海农村地区的居民收入上升最快,其次为沿海城市地区.在这个时期,收入的不平等也在扩大,尤其是在城市地区,抵消了一部分由增长带来的减贫成果.通过对收入决定因素的分解,作者发现,收入水平的改善在很大程度上归功于教育回报率的上升和农村非农产业的就业增长.     

Education Enrollment Level and Income Inequality: A Case of SAARC Economies

This article introduces ‘critical open-mindedness’ as a new sociological construct, which can be employed particularly in the studies of social attitudes and attitude change, social values, social identities, cross-cultural relations and social discrimination. By drawing on the data collected through the 2005 World Values Survey in Australia, we have operationalized the construct into an integrative social index, called ‘critical open-mindedness index’ consisting of five dimensional composite indicators (CIs; i.e. the social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental). We have adopted an integrative approach to constructing these composite indicators in which we pragmatically select and incorporate a variety of techniques with the purpose of maximizing the validity of the end results. The findings with respect to Australians’ critical open-mindedness, both in general and in reference to its five dimensions are discussed. We have also developed and examined a social psychological index of ‘socio-cognitive open-mindedness’ inspired by a number of commonly used international scales and by drawing on the same dataset. We have shown that these two types of open-mindedness are qualitatively different. Our analysis does not support the idea that individuals’ social psychological open-mindedness determines their critical open-mindedness. It is rather the opposite which is the case.