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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 poverty rate in Malaysia has dropped tremendously, whereas income inequality has followed an upward and downward trend. Beginning 1957/58 until 1990, Malaysia has completed one cycle of Kuznets Inverted‐U Hypothesis. However, since the 1990s income inequality is beginning to move upward again. One of the major concerned by the government in line to reduce poverty and income inequality is the role of education. Inequality in educational attainment may contribute inequality in income distribution. This paper attempts to analyze trend of income inequality and poverty in Malaysia. The main objectives of this paper are to look at the distribution of employment by educational status and the relationship between educational attainments amongst employees with income inequality.

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.

Based on government data from 1993 to 2008, this chapter aims to compute and analyze the trends of inequity in interprovincial and regional per-student spending in China's compulsory education, and to ascertain the potential impact of changes in education financing policies. Appropriate inequity measures (Gini and Theil index and Gini decomposition, among others) are employed to provide a systematic picture of the trends. Main findings include: (1) all inequity measures show large and overall increased disparities among provinces and among regions, between 1993 and 2008. (2) However, a slight drop of spending inequity is observed at the primary education level around 2002 and a larger reduction in 2005 and on. There are more turning points in the trend of lower-secondary per-student spending among provinces. These patterns are consistent across different inequity measures and spending indicators (per-student total spending, per-student recurrent spending, and per-student nonpersonnel spending). (3) The trend toward more balanced resource allocation around 2002 and 2005 could be the impact from the Reform of Tax and Administrative Charges and the New Mechanism for Financing Rural Compulsory Education. An increased share of budgetary expenditure in determining total spending suggests that equalizing financing policies have the potential to induce a significant reduction in spending inequity. These findings may help policy makers to better understand and alter the extent of spending inequity in compulsory education. This is an original empirical study that systematically derives the spending inequity trends over a long period in China's compulsory education.

The paper seeks to analyse the self‐selection of international migrants on observable skills.

Based on an extended version of the Roy model, which considers random migration costs, the authors analyse the self‐selection of migrants on observable skills empirically. For this purpose, the authors employ a new panel data set on the educational attainment of migrants, which covers migration from 143 sending countries into the six main receiving countries in the OECD from 1975 to 2000.

Migrants tend to be positively self‐selected on observable skills, although the inequality in earnings is larger in the sending country relative to the destination countries. The estimation results indicate that a higher inequality in the distribution of earnings in both the receiving and the sending country affects the skill bias of the migrant population favourably. Moreover, higher migration costs and selective immigration policies increase the skill level of migrants relative to those of stayers in the sending countries.

The results may be affected by measurement error, since it was necessary to approximate the returns to education by measures for the inequality of earnings.

The paper provides, inter alia, insights as to how immigration and other policies affect the self‐selection of migrants on observable skills, which may be relevant for policy makers.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to analyse the self‐selection of migrants on the basis of a panel data set.

Income inequality rose in Germany since the 1970s. To quantify the impact of different socio-economic trends on inequality, the author constructs counterfactual distributions of net household income with rich German data from the Microcensus in 1976 and 2011. The procedure allows to study the effect of marital sorting in education and includes indirect effects such as the influence of education on employment. When comparing the income distribution in West Germany for 1976 and 2011, the author finds that the prevalence of singlehood accounts to a large extent for the observed increase in inequality. The inequality increase is also associated with a change of employment among males and single females. When comparing West and East Germany in 2011, the author finds that the stronger labour market attachment of East German married females combined with the high East German unemployment produces even more income inequality than the West German employment structure. Moreover, the smaller household size boosts inequality in East Germany, whereas education works against it. In both comparisons, the author finds no significant impact of positive assortative mating in education or ageing.

This paper investigates whether an outcome-based school aid formula could improve fiscal and outcome equity significantly more than a typical aid formula would. When outcome-based formula is applied to foundation aid, fiscal and outcome equity deteriorates compared to Ohio's recent aid formula. However, when it is applied to power-equalizing aid, the latter improves fiscal and outcome equity more significantly than both foundation aid and Ohio's recent aid formula do. This paper further shows how to apply them to real-world cases. The lessons from this paper can be easily applied to similar grant systems with standardized test scores.

Although they are neighbouring Asian countries with many similarities, India and Indonesia have different levels of household expenditure inequality. During the end of 2000s, the Gini coefficient of Indonesia was 9.1 percentage points larger than the Gini coefficient of India. To understand the determinants of this difference, this study decomposes it into the contribution of price effects, demographic effects and labour market structure effects. Differences in expenditure structures (price effects) and demographic characteristics are found to be the greatest contributors to the inequality gap across the two countries. The difference in the education distribution of household heads also has a positive and significant impact on the inequality gap. Differences in the labour market structure, on the other hand, turn out to be less important.

Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the countries, their people, their businesses, and their governments. It is a change driven by international trade, implemented by various policies and aided by modern technology. It has impacts on the environment, culture, political systems, economic development and prosperity, and human physical well-being in societies around the world. But there can be some negative impacts as well. One possible outcome of globalization of all sorts can be the income inequalities. Objective of this chapter is to search for any such connection. Gini coefficient, unemployment rate, Below Poverty Line (BPL) is taken to understand the extent of inequalities in different countries. Outcome shows some countries do not show any association between globalization and income inequalities; some do. Therefore, there are some other variables which influence the above relationship. This chapter tries to identify all such background factors. It reveals that factors like level of development, demographic structure, urbanization, adult and tertiary level of education and government expenditure share in higher education play important roles. All these have different magnitudes of impacts on change in income distribution due to the initial process of globalization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of income inequality among fisher households in the four segments of the Volta Basin in Ghana and the determinants of small-scale fisher household welfare.

The paper investigates income inequality and the determinants of household consumption expenditure of fishers in the Volta Basin of Ghana using the Lorenz curve, Gini coefficient decomposition and the multiple linear regression technique.

The findings confirm the empirical evidence that households in the general downstream communities and their compatriots in the upstream communities were statistically different in terms of household characteristics and physical and social capital. Income inequality was highest among households in upstream communities but least amongst downstream communities. Livelihoods of the fishery households largely and strictly favored male households. Also, educational status was associated with higher levels of income which enormously help reduce food insecurity.

The reliance on dummy variables might lead to omissions of revealed understated differences between households.

The study recommends that effort should be made to help increase fish production in the upstream communities. Furthermore, alternative sources of income should be introduced to households in the upstream so they do not become more disadvantaged by the construction of the dam.

The uniqueness of the paper is that it tries to estimate the impact of the construction of the dam on the Volta Basin by taking into consideration the effect of the construction of the dam on the upstream and downstream separately.