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。     

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.     

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.     

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).     

Stepping stones: Principal career paths and school outcomes

More than one out of every five principals leaves their school each year. In some cases, these career changes are driven by the choices of district leadership. In other cases, principals initiate the move, often demonstrating preferences to work in schools with higher achieving students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Principals often use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments. We use longitudinal data from one large urban school district to study the relationship between principal turnover and school outcomes. We find that principal turnover is, on average, detrimental to school performance. Frequent turnover of school leadership results in lower teacher retention and lower student achievement gains. Leadership changes are particularly harmful for high poverty schools, low-achieving schools, and schools with many inexperienced teachers. These schools not only suffer from high rates of principal turnover but are also unable to attract experienced successors. The negative effect of leadership changes can be mitigated when vacancies are filled by individuals with prior experience leading other schools. However, the majority of new principals in high poverty and low-performing schools lack prior leadership experience and leave when more attractive positions become available in other schools.     

Inequality in Social Insurance Participation and Generosity: Do Firm Characteristics Matter?

Income inequality in China has been much documented and debated. However, one important aspect of income inequality – social insurance inequality – has been largely understudied. We use a large national panel of firm data to examine the possible influence of various firm characteristics on the inequalities in social insurance participation and generosity in the period 2004–07. Our findings reveal substantial ownership sector and regional gaps in social insurance provision by firms, with the private domestic sector and those in the central region lagging behind. Unionized firms, larger firms, and firms with greater market shares also tend to provide better social insurance to their employees. While being an exporting firm is linked with greater social insurance participation and generosity, being a purely exporting firm, however, is associated with reduced social insurance generosity. Lastly, highly educated workers receive substantially better social insurance coverage than their less educated peers. These social insurance inequalities are highly relevant as China pushes forward with establishing a unified social insurance system across urban‐rural boundaries, ownership sectors and industries.     

African-American and white inequality in the nineteenth century American South: a biological comparison

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic history. By using a new source of nineteenth century Texas state prison records, the present study contrasts the heights of comparable blacks and whites between the Civil War and Reconstruction in the American South. White stature exceeded black stature. Between 1850 and 1870, black stature declined by more than 1 cm but recovered toward the end of the nineteenth century. Postbellum white stature declined by more than 1 1/2 cm over the same period yet never recovered.

Theory and methods for partitioned Gini coefficients computed on post-stratified data

The Gini coefficient is used to measure inequality in populations. However, shifts in the population distribution may affect subgroups differently. Consequently, it can be informative to examine inequality separately for these segments. Consider an independently and identically distributed sample split based on ranking and compute the Gini coefficient for each partition. These coefficients, calculated from post-stratified data, are not functions of U-statistics. Therefore, previous theoretical and methodological results cannot be applied. In this article, the asymptotic joint distribution is derived for the partitioned coefficients and bootstrap methods for inference are developed. Finally, an application to per capita income across census tracts is examined.