New Economics Papers
on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty
Issue of 2014‒04‒18
eight papers chosen by
  1. Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners By Powdthavee, Nattavudh; Oswald, Andrew J.
  2. Human well-being and in-work benefits: A randomized controlled trial By Dorsett, Richard; Oswald, Andrew J.
  3. Income Mobility By Markus Jantti; Stephen P. Jenkins
  4. Pathways to the middle class in Turkey : how have reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity helped ? By Azevedo, Joao Pedro; Atamanov, Aziz
  5. Does the Risk of Poverty Reduce Happiness? By Stefano A. Caria; Paolo Falco
  6. Ethnic Inequality By Alesina, Alberto; Michalopoulos, Stelios; Papaioannou, Elias
  7. Local Segregation and Well-being By Coral del Rio; Olga Alonso-Villar
  8. Chartbook of economic inequality By Anthony B. Atkinson; Salvatore Morelli
  1. By: Powdthavee, Nattavudh (London School of Economics); Oswald, Andrew J. (University of Warwick)
    Abstract: The causes of people’s political attitudes are largely unknown. We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing people before and after a lottery windfall, we show that winners tend to switch towards support for a right-wing political party and to become less egalitarian. The larger the win, the more people tilt to the right. This relationship is robust to (i) different ways of defining right-wing, (ii) a variety of estimation methods, and (iii) methods that condition on the person previously having voted left. It is strongest for males. Our findings are consistent with the view that voting is driven partly by human self-interest. Money apparently makes people more right-wing.
    Keywords: Voting; gender; lottery wins; political preferences; income; attitudes.
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:185&r=ltv
  2. By: Dorsett, Richard (National Institute of Economic and Social Research); Oswald, Andrew J. (University of Warwick)
    Abstract: Many politicians believe they can intervene in the economy to improve people’s lives. But can they? In a social experiment carried out in the United Kingdom, extensive in-work support was randomly assigned among 16,000 disadvantaged people. We follow a sub-sample of 3,500 single parents for 5 ensuing years. The results reveal a remarkable, and troubling, finding. Long after eligibility had ceased, the treated individuals had substantially lower psychological well-being, worried more about money, and were increasingly prone to debt. Thus helping people apparently hurt them. We discuss a behavioral framework consistent with our findings and reflect on implications for policy.
    Keywords: Well-Being
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:182&r=ltv
  3. By: Markus Jantti (Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University, Sweden); Stephen P. Jenkins (Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics, UK and ISER, University of Essex, IZA, Bonn.)
    Abstract: We survey the literature on income mobility, aiming to provide an integrated discussion of mobility within- and between-generations. We review mobility concepts, descriptive devices, measurement methods, data sources, and recent empirical evidence.
    Keywords: Intragenerational mobility, intergenerational mobility, income mobility, earnings mobility
    JEL: D31 I30
    Date: 2014–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2014-319&r=ltv
  4. By: Azevedo, Joao Pedro; Atamanov, Aziz
    Abstract: Turkey's poverty reduction performance in the 2000s has been remarkably consistent. Extreme and moderate poverty have fallen considerably since 2003. Between 2002 and 2011, extreme poverty fell from 13 percent to 5 percent, while moderate poverty halved from 44 percent to 22 percent (respectively, defined using the World Bank's Europe and Central Asia regional poverty lines of 2.5 and 5 USD/PPP). Most of this poverty reduction (89 percent) has been driven by growth, a performance consistent with most countries in Europe and Central Asia. This is substantially different form the recent performance of other regions, such as Latin America, where redistribution contributed to poverty reduction almost four times more than in Turkey. Turkey has also achieved sustained consumption growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population, even during the years of the world recession. Turkey's performance in poverty reduction and increased shared prosperity has been complemented by the systematic expansion of the middle class by 20 percentage points. This paper analyzes the main drivers of poverty reduction, shared prosperity, and changes in inequality in Turkey from 2002 to 2011. The analysis shows that labor markets, demographics, pensions, and social assistance have played a critical role in this process. It further explores some of the mechanisms that have facilitated these changes.
    Keywords: Rural Poverty Reduction,Regional Economic Development,Inequality,Achieving Shared Growth
    Date: 2014–04–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6834&r=ltv
  5. By: Stefano A. Caria (University of Oxford); Paolo Falco (University of Oxford)
    Keywords: poverty, vulnerability, risk, subjective well-being, happiness, loss-aversion
    JEL: D60 I31 I32 D81 O12
    Date: 2014–04–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csl:devewp:363&r=ltv
  6. By: Alesina, Alberto (Harvard University, NBER and IGIER); Michalopoulos, Stelios (Brown University and NBER); Papaioannou, Elias (London Business School, CEPR and NBER)
    Abstract: This study explores the consequences and origins of between-ethnicity economic inequality both across and within countries. First, combining satellite images of nighttime luminosity with the historical homelands of ethnolinguistic groups we construct measures of ethnic inequality for a large sample of countries and show that the latter is strongly inversely related to comparative development. Second, differences in geographic endowments across ethnic homelands explain a sizable portion of ethnic inequality contributing to its persistence over time. Third, exploiting across-district within-African countries variation using individual-level data on ethnic identification and well-being from the Afrobarometer Surveys we find that between ethnic-group inequality is systematically linked to regional under-development. In this sample we also explore the channels linking ethnic inequality to (under) development, finding that ethnic inequality maps to political inequality, heightened perceptions of discrimination and undersupply of public goods.
    Keywords: Ethnicity, Diversity, Inequality, Development, Geography
    Date: 2013
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:155&r=ltv
  7. By: Coral del Rio (Universidade de Vigo and EQUALITAS); Olga Alonso-Villar (Universidade de Vigo and EQUALITAS)
    Abstract: This paper proposes an index that quantifies the well-being (ill-being) of a target group as associated with its occupational segregation: that is, it assesses the gains/losses of that group which are derived from its underrepresentation in some occupations and overrepresentation in others. This index has several good properties. In particular, it is equal to zero when either the group has no segregation or all occupations have the same wage, and increases when individuals of the group move into occupations that have higher wages than those left behind. Moreover, our well-being measure permits to rank different demographic groups using distributive value judgments that are in the line of those conducted in the literature on economic inequality.
    Keywords: Segregation measures; occupations; status; well-being; ill-being.
    JEL: D63 J0 J15 J71
    Date: 2014–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2014-320&r=ltv
  8. By: Anthony B. Atkinson (Nuffield College, Oxford, LSE and Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School); Salvatore Morelli (CSEF – University of Naples – Federico II and Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School)
    Abstract: The purpose of this Chartbook is to present a summary of evidence about long-run changes in economic inequality – primarily income, earnings, and wealth – for 25 countries covering more than one hundred years. There is a range of countries and they account for more than a third of the world’s population: Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US. The results are presented in 25 charts, one for each country, together with a description of the sources. The underlying figures are available for download at www.chartbookofeconomicinequality.com.
    Date: 2014–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2014-324&r=ltv
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