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This paper introduces a new quinquennial dataset of educational inequality disaggregated by age group for 146 countries, from 1950 to 2010, by using the Gini index of education as a measure of the distribution of years of schooling. Based on recent estimates of average years of schooling from Barro and Lee (2010), our calculations take into consideration, for the first time, the changes over time in the duration of educational stages, in each country and for each age group. The downward trends in educational inequality observed during the last decades depend on age group, gender, and development level.

The objectives of this study are threefold: firstly, to measure the impact of educational inequality on income inequality, and per capita income; secondly, to measure the impact of gender inequality in education on income inequality, per capita income and educational inequality; and lastly, to test the Kuznets inverted U-shape hypothesis between inequality in education and average year of schooling.

The study has adopted the Marin and Psacharopoulos (1976) model of human capital in which income earned by an individual can be estimated as a function of number of year spent in schooling or education. Gini coefficient is used as a measure of income inequality, while inequality in education is measured by Gini index of educational inequality. Gender inequality in education is measured by the difference between male and female enrolment ratios as a proportion of male enrolment. The study utilizes the data of six South Asian countries, i.e. Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka from 1980 to 2010 at five-year average and employs fixed effect model (FEM) and random effect model (REM) for estimation.

Result suggests that educational inequality and average year of schooling have positive and significant impact on income inequality. Primary (basic) education and tertiary (higher) education reduce income inequality, while secondary education widens income inequality. Negative relationship exists between educational inequality and per capita income. Unequal distribution of education among boys and girls at primary level increases income inequality, while reduces income inequality at tertiary level. Gender inequality in secondary and tertiary level of education reduces per capita income, while unequal distribution of education among boys and girls further increases the educational inequality. Kuznets inverted U-shape hypothesis does not hold between education expansion and educational inequality, while weak U-shape relationship exists in South Asian countries.

Government has to provide free education in poor regions and makes employment programs to reduce the income and educational inequality respectively, while to remove gender inequality in education it is necessary to build more schools especially for girls. Government has to launch different online education programs for expansion in education at all levels.

This study adds to the literature by analyzing whether the inequality in income increases (decreases) due to increase (decrease) in educational and gender inequality in South Asian countries. This study contributes in the existing literature by developing a measure of educational and gender inequality in education in South Asian countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2020-0226.

Despite significant progress in schooling, social and spatial inequalities in access to education remain important in Algeria. In the present article, taking into account the geographic dimension makes it possible to identify the links existing between spatial location and disparities in the field of education in Algeria. Also, three types of education indicators (quantity, quality and inequality) are used in the study. The study’s sample includes 48 Algerian provinces, studied between 2008 and 2018.

In this study, the authors used data from the 2008 and 2018 General Census of Population and Housing (GCPH) for 48 provinces. Indeed, the two censuses of 2008 and 2018 (sources of data for this study) were based on questionnaires intended for different categories of the population (households, non-household populations, transit population, etc.). Therefore, the no response rate is assumed to be close to 0. Using spatial econometric techniques.

Results indicate that the indicator used is strong spatial disparity in education in Algeria. The development of a spatial synthetic index (SI) makes it possible to measure more precisely the extent and nature of spatial disparities in the field of education in Algeria. The results also confirm the hypothesis of β-convergence of the performance of the Algerian education system. Consequently, the need for policies to reduce the unfair inequalities between different areas is apparent.

Works that analyze education indicators in a classical perspective (educational performances between different sexes and between rural and urban areas) are abundant (Amaghouss and Ibourk, 2013a). However, very few studies proceed to the analysis of educational variables in a spatial perspective (Catin and Hazem, 2012). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no work has tried to analyze spatial disparities in the field of education in Algeria.

The aim of this paper is to extend a theoretical model due to Ljungqvist and data from a sample of 19 developing economies to empirically test it.

Data for all variables are from the 2005 Human Development Report and the 2006 World Development Report. The author applies the least‐squares estimation technique in a multivariate linear regression.

Based on data from the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, the paper uses a sample of 19 developing economies and finds that cross‐country variations in income/consumption inequality may be explained by inequality of investment in human capital as measured by inequalities in child health as well as inequality in education and by inequality in the distribution of land as measured by the land Gini index.

Assuming a population consisting of skilled laborers, unskilled laborers, educators/health care personnel, and farmers, the paper shows that starting from an initial distribution of assets and in the absence of a perfect capital market along with human capital exhibiting increasing returns it is possible to have persistent inequality in the distribution of income or consumption. Regression results also are consistent with the theoretical implication of the model as the extent of inequality in land distribution and in access to education as well as inequalities in child health do linearly influence income or consumption inequality as measured by the ratio of the share of income or consumption accounted for by the richest quintile to that of the poorest quintile. As a result, if governments in developing countries aim to reduce inequality, they need to implement programs designed to reduce inequalities in child health by allowing children from the poorest of the poor to get fully immunized, which in turn would lead to a reduction in infant and child mortality and in education by providing low‐income families with means so that their children have better access to education. Government land policies, on the other hand, that succeed in reducing inequality in land distribution in developing countries, may be beneficial in terms of lessening income/expenditure inequality. Finally, while the present model does not test for the impact that improving capital markets would have, it stands to reason that improving capital markets could also have an impact on decreasing inequality.

In this paper the author uses a model due to Ljungqvist to show that individuals are relatively wealthy because they either own a fixed input such as land or they are able to invest in human capital, which in turn allow them to earn sufficient rent or labor income to remain wealthy. On the other hand, poor people either do not own land or are not capable of investing in human capital, and, as a result, earn low incomes and remain poor. This joint causation of factor endowment or human capital investment and income helps explain income distribution. Using data from the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank for a sample of 19 developing economies, it is found that cross‐country variations in income/consumption inequality may be explained by inequality of investment in human capital as measured by inequalities in child health as well as well as inequality in education and by inequality in the distribution of land as measured by the land Gini index. These results will help governments in developing countries identify areas that need to be improved upon in order to reduce income/consumption inequality.

This study investigates how working-age Asian immigrants' educational attainment and professional abilities when arriving in the United States have evolved over the past 4 decades and draws inferences on the impact of the US employment based visa policies.

Using data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 census and American Community Survey for 2001 to 2019, the study adopts multivariate regression and regression discontinuity design to investigate the trends in educational and occupation selection among Asian immigrants and the association with policy changes in the H1B visa program.

The findings suggest that new Asian immigrants were more positively selected for education than non-Asian immigrants and US natives and this pattern of positive selection increased over time. Newly arrived South Asian and East Asian immigrants had the highest share of highly educated professionals than Southeast Asians and US-born persons. I infer that the enactment and changes in the H1-B program might have contributed to the changing patterns of the educational and occupational selection among East and South Asian Immigrants. The results also shed light on how Asian immigrants' skill selection might be related to the size of Asian diasporas in the US and sending countries' income, inequality and education level.

The story of changing the skill profile (educational and occupational profile) of newly arrived Asian immigrants during 1980–2019 can provide valuable policy implications. US immigration policies are routinely criticized for being inefficient and outdated. The economic prosperity of Asian countries over time also provides an excellent opportunity to test the theories pertaining to how sending countries' income, inequality and education level of the population are associated with Asian migrants' education and occupation when arriving in the US. This study can provide insightful perspectives for policymakers and business decision-makers to adapt to the changing demographics of Asian migrant workers. The most recent reports on Asian immigrants in the US highlighted the aggregated trends of migration flow and education. Still, none have provided a longitudinal and nuanced review of Asian immigrants' educational and occupational selection into the US.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary analysis to evaluate the implications of political stability for educational quality, evident in the survival rate measure.

Secondary analyses were conducted for data drawn from the Political Risk Service Report, the World Bank Report, the United Nations Report and the OECD Report, using a sample comprising 47 countries, 26 politically stable and 21 politically unstable during a ten‐year period of time (1998‐2008).

The study reveals that political stability plays a major role in explaining the survival rate in education when used as a single predictor or, when introduced in the analysis with the GDP per capita. Following previously reported findings suggesting causal relations between high economic growth and regime stability, the authors’ analyses show that as far as educational quality is concerned, political stability plays a far more significant role compared to countries’ economic circumstances evident in the GDP per capita.

These initial findings suggest that economic conditions create an essential infrastructure which in itself is not sufficient. Political stability which fosters continuity seems to be essential to enable professional considerations to dominate educational processes and allow educators to conduct pedagogical programs from start to finish.

The main aim of this study is to investigate the role of fathers and mothers in the intergenerational educational persistence for sons and daughters under two dimensions that characterize the clusters of countries: redistributive policy and governance.

Data from the Global Database of Intergenerational Mobility (GDIM), hierarchical cluster analysis on principal components and panel regression are used in this study to estimate intergenerational educational correlation and to investigate its determinants related to the parents’ and descendants’ education variables in 93 countries grouped in four clusters. The empirical analysis is differentiated by gender combinations of parents and descendants.

In the clusters of countries characterized by high inequalities and poor governance, our findings show that the role of the fathers is stronger than that of the mothers in educational transmission; fathers and mothers are more influential for the daughters rather than for the sons; parental educational privilege is the main driver of intergenerational educational persistence; there is an inverse U-curve in the association between educational inequality of the parents and educational correlation for the sons. Differently, in the countries characterized by high income, low redistributive conflict and better governance, the role of the mothers is stronger and education mobility for the daughters is higher than that for the sons.

The authors’ results remark on the importance of social welfare policies aimed to expand a meritocratic public education system including schooling transfers for lower social class students and narrowing the gender gap in educational mobility between daughters and sons. Social welfare policies should also be oriented to spread high quality child care systems that help to foster greater women equality in the labor market, because the strength of educational persistence depends on the position of the mother in the economic hierarchy.

The distinctiveness of the paper can be found in the fact that this study investigates the parental role differentiating by gender and coupling hierarchical cluster analysis on principal components with panel regression models. This allows us to have a sample of 93 countries aggregated in four groups defined in two dimensions: redistributive policy and governance. Amongst the determinants of educational transmission, we consider not only education’s years of the parents but also other determinants, such as educational inequality and privilege of the parents. We also identify the effects of investment in human capital and educational inequalities for the descendants on education mobility.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of income inequality on the economic growth of Brazilian states in the period from 1994 to 2014. The transmission mechanism of the effects of income inequality on economic growth is derived from the model proposed by Halter et al. (2014).

The empirical formulation adopted to achieve this goal is divided into two stages. The first stage is limited to short-term analysis, and panel data models with fixed effects, random effects, and instrumental variables are used. In the second stage, the discussion turns to the use of the error correction model for a cointegrated panel.

The findings of this study suggest that inequalities in income and educational level are the principal determinants of different growth rates among Brazilian states. More specifically, it is found that additional years of schooling positively influence growth. By contrast, income inequality negatively affects this indicator.

The present study differs from the others in that it adapts the discussion proposed by Halter et al. (2014) to the analysis of Brazilian states. Halter et al. (2014) derive the transmission channel between income inequality and economic growth, showing a non-monotonic adjustment trajectory of production that leads to a linear theoretical model of income inequality and economic growth that is similar to those used in this type of approach.

Does civic participation, especially in the arts, increase democracy? This chapter extends this neo-Tocquevillian question in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change by separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we include multiple dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Program and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in seven different subcultures and contexts that we explicate, from class politics and clientelism to Protestant and Orthodox Christian civilizational traditions.

It is our pleasure as editors to dedicate Research on Economic Inequality, Volume 20 to Professor Jacques Silber. Jacques is a long-time friend of the series and has kindly functioned as a mentor and advisor to us.