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Details a behavioral theory of economic welfare that overlaps and extends the global theoretical framework contained in Pareto Optimality, with significant public policy implications. The essence of this framework is contained in Adam Smith’s the Wealth of Nations where it is argued that the economic welfare of society cannot be augmented if the material level of well‐being of the working population is reduced, even if the economy experiences growth. Moreover, it is argued that there need not be an equity‐efficiency trade‐off in a competitive market economy to the extent that wages positively affect productivity and do not increase production costs. Therefore, shifting from a low to a high wage economy is welfare improving. Smith, in effect, argues that one can have economic ‘justice’ and economic efficiency where the former is necessary to the latter. The behavioral model of economic welfare paints a dynamic picture of economic welfare in contradistinction to the static framework provided by Pareto Optimality wherein the conditions of Pareto Optimality need not be violated.

An important hypothesis put forth by Amartya Sen is that a given level of per capita real income in a population can generate quite different levels of socio‐economic well‐being depending on the economic infrastructure of that population and the distribution of income. Sen's hypothesis is refined in this paper to reflect the manner in which income is spent and labor is allocated and utilized within a household specific to particular groups within society and how this impacts upon both the level of well‐being and economic efficiency. The evidence on living conditions and mortality presented here from early twentieth century New York City, underlies the potential significance of the household economy as a key determinant of economic well‐being. Focusing simply on per capita income estimates, even corrected for the distribution of income, misses fundamentally important determinants of human capabilities and economic well‐being with potentially important implications for public policy.

The ecosystem view is a fascinating perspective which provides management scholars with innovative conceptual tools to investigate the functioning of complex service systems. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the “mega” level of the education service ecosystem in an attempt to explain the relationships between education attainments and income disparities across Europe.

Data were collected from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Data trends over the time period (2007-2010) were investigated, involving 27 European countries. Unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity was controlled and dynamics over time were investigated. A random effects model was estimated for each country. The semi-log functional form is informed by Mincer’s (1974) human capital models.

Education levels were found to be a predictor of income inequality in all the countries included in this research, i.e. higher education level leads to higher income and vice versa. However, the effect of education attainments on individual earnings was irregular. Eastern European countries, inter alia, revealed a strong relationship between education attainments and individual earnings, whereas Scandinavian countries showed a weak link between education levels and income.

Education has the potential to affect income inequalities in Europe. Policy makers should develop tailored strategies to deal with the consequences of education levels on individual earnings. Both education services’ quality and the interaction between education and moderating socio-demographic variables may influence income inequality in European countries.

This is one of the first attempts to investigate the relationship between education and income inequalities drawing on the service ecosystem perspective. Further conceptual and practical developments are needed to better explain the effects of education attainments on income inequality.

This study aims to empirically analyze the symmetries and asymmetries among the critical factors affecting building information modeling (BIM) implementation between countries with different income levels. To achieve that aim, the study objectives are to identify: critical factors affecting BIM implementation in low-, lower-middle-, upper-middle- and high-income countries; overlapping critical factors between countries with different income levels; and agreements on the critical factors between countries with different income levels.

This study identified potential BIM implementation factors using a systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews with architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) professionals. Then, the factors were inserted into a questionnaire survey and sent to AEC professionals in Afghanistan, India, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. The collected data was analyzed using the following techniques and tests: mean, standard deviation, normalized value, Kruskal–Wallis, Dunn and Mann–Whitney.

Five critical factors overlap between all countries: “availability of guidelines for implementing BIM,” “cost-benefit of implementing BIM,” “stakeholders’ willingness to learn the BIM method,” “consistent views on BIM between stakeholders” and “existence of standard contracts on liability and risk allocation.” Also, the criticality of the factors often differs between income levels, especially between low- and high-income countries, suggesting a significant gap between low- and high-income countries in BIM implementation.

This study differs from prior works by empirically analyzing the symmetries and asymmetries in BIM implementation factors between countries with different income levels (i.e. low-, lower-middle-, upper-middle- and high-income countries).

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.

Previous studies of immigrant populations suggest that ceteris paribus an immigrant's level of income is strongly and positively correlated with his proficiency in the local language. The purpose of this paper is to extend this literature using data from a telephone survey carried out in 2005 among a representative sample of Former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants. Unlike previous surveys, the data includes responses to detailed subjective questions on degree of social involvement, in addition to the number of years since migration and level of proficiency in the local language. The authors are able to demonstrate that a higher degree of assimilation is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of finding full-time employment. Moreover, the estimation results for the wage equation reveal that the effect on income previously attributed solely to language proficiency is in fact also the result of more successful assimilation in the receiving culture. The findings thus stress the importance of assimilation in determining success in job search and in explaining variations in income among immigrants who are already employed in full-time jobs. Finally, the results obtained when differentiating according to gender show that male immigrants have better prospects of finding a job than female immigrants and higher incomes once they find one, which is consistent with the existing literature.

In order to compare the relative importance of the language proficiency variable (LANGUAGE _i ) to that of the social involvement variable (ASSIMILATION _i ), The authors apply the probit model to two separate equations. The first is the prospects of finding a job and the second is the wage equation.

–The authors are able to demonstrate that a higher degree of assimilation is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of finding full-time employment. Moreover, the estimation results for the wage equation reveal that the effect on income previously attributed solely to language proficiency is in fact also the result of more successful assimilation in the receiving culture. The findings thus stress the importance of assimilation in determining success in job search and in explaining variations in income among immigrants who are already employed in full-time jobs. Finally, the results obtained when differentiating according to gender show that male immigrants have better prospects of finding a job than female immigrants and higher incomes once they find one, which is consistent with the existing literature.

The limitation is, like all of the existing literature and in particular the few studies that deal with social networking, that the database is exclusively based on either interviews or surveys consisting of self-assessment questions (such as, Dustman, 1996; Lazear, 1999; Amuedo-Dorantes and Mundra, 2007). Consequently, the implicit assumption is that the respondent's self-perceived level of assimilation constitutes a good proxy for the true level.

The implications are the following: the findings are thus consistent with those of Lazear (1999), who anticipates a negative correlation between the relative size of a minority group and the level of proficiency in the local language. In the case of Israel, which received a massive wave of 1.5 million immigrants from the FSU, the findings indeed suggest that the chances of an immigrant job seeker finding a job are far more dependent on his degree of assimilation than his level of language proficiency. Moreover, the effect of the degree of assimilation, which has not previously been included in estimations, was mistakenly attributed to language proficiency. The findings of this research thus reveal the importance of the degree of assimilation in finding a job and can explain income differences among those who have already found full-time employment.

Previous studies of immigrant populations suggest that ceteris paribus the level of income is strongly and positively correlated with proficiency in the local language. The current study extends this literature using data from a telephone survey carried out in 2005 among a representative sample of FSU immigrants. Unlike previous surveys, the data includes responses to detailed subjective questions on degree of social involvement, in addition to the number of years since migration and level of proficiency in the local language. The authors are able to demonstrate that a higher degree of assimilation is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of finding full-time employment. Moreover, the estimation results for the wage equation reveal that the effect on income previously attributed to language proficiency is in fact the result of more successful assimilation in the receiving culture. The results are robust to gender differences. The findings thus stress the importance of assimilation in determining success in job search and in explaining variations in income among immigrants who are already employed in full-time jobs.

Brazil’s regional inequality is an important topic due to the large and persistent differences in development between states and the high levels of inequality in the country. These variations in development can potentially render survey data inaccurate since the significance of capital income varies across the states. Besides, previous studies incorporating tax and national accounts data globally have mainly focused on measuring the income distribution at the country-level. This approach can limit the understanding of inequality, especially when considering large countries such as Brazil.

The methodology used to construct these estimates follows the guidelines of the Distributional National Accounts, whose core goal is to provide income distribution measures consistent with macroeconomic aggregates and harmonized across countries and time. The procedure has three main steps: first, it corrects the survey’s underrepresentation of top incomes using tax data. Then, it accounts for national income items not included in the survey or tax data, such as imputed rents and undistributed profits. Finally, it ensures that all components match the national income.

Compared to survey-based estimations, the results reveal a new angle on the state-level inequality. This study indicates that Amazonas, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have a more concentrated income distribution. The top 1\% of earners in these states receives around 28\% of total pre-tax income, while the top 10\% receive nearly 60\%. On the other end, Amapá (AP), Acre (AC), Rondônia (RO) and Santa Catarina (SC) are the states where the income distribution is less concentrated. There were no significant changes in the income distribution across the states during the period analyzed.

This study combines survey, tax and national accounts data to construct new estimates of Brazil’s state-level income distribution from 2006 to 2019. Previous results only considered income captured in surveys, which usually misses a significant part of capital incomes. This limitation may bias comparisons as capital income has different importance across the states. The new estimates represent the income of top groups more accurately, account for the entire national income and enable to compare regional inequality levels consistently with other countries.

The purpose of this paper is to determine composite flour and bread consumption, and to analyse economic efficiency by comparing Kazakhstan and Turkey.

The material of the study was analysed through cross-section, χ² and T-test, data collected from the online questionnaires of 269 families from Kazakhstan (131 families) and Turkey (138 families). The families were classified into four categories on the basis of their income level and into three categories on the basis of their education level and age level.

According to the study results, Kazakhstan and Turkey families consume different types of flours and breads; the consumption of composite flour per capita has been 2 kg/month, but the bread consumption per capita has been 2 pieces/day. A χ² analysis has shown that country, family size, age, sex, income and occupation had a significant effect on flour and bread consumption. It was detected that the price of composite flour products and bread is related to the income of a family. According to the survey data, in Kazakhstan and Turkey, the average monthly income of the families have been calculated as $675, and the average income per person have been calculated as $170. Families purchase of composite flour products and bread has been $6. There is an increase amount of flour and bread consumption (p<0.010) in the low-income level, but in families with high-income level, there is a decrease amount of consumption. The price of flour products and bread is associated with the income of a family; these products have seen as reasonable and practical products. The income level and age level affect the consumption of flour and bread. Although the education level and occupation of consumers are varied, flour and bread have been preferred by every age group of consumers as a conventional food, whether it is a healthy food or not. New trend of consumption healthy products as a composite flour and bread influences on consumers purchase.

Flour and bread constitute the main and strategically important food product worldwide. The food security of a country depends on the state of the grain economy and the broad availability of the population. Grain production is the largest branch of agricultural production, and it has an important economic and social significance. The flour and bread were the main economic and political problem thousands of years ago.

Improving the nutritious quality of diets for individuals and populations is a central goal of many public health advocates and intergovernmental organizations. Yet the outcome of healthy eating has been shown to systematically vary across individual-level socioeconomic lines, and across countries in different locations of the food system. We therefore assess variation in the association between eating nutritionally dense fresh fruits and vegetables and both self-rated health (SRH) and body mass index (BMI) across individual income and country locations in the food system.

We use nationally representative survey data from 31 countries drawn from the International Social Survey Programme’s 2011 Health module. We estimate the effect of the frequency of eating fresh fruits and vegetables using random-intercept, random-coefficient multilevel mixed-effects regression models.

We confirm that eating nutritionally dense fresh fruits and vegetables frequently associates with more positive health outcomes. However, this general conclusion masks substantial individual- and country-level heterogeneity. For both SRH and BMI, the largest beneficial associations are concentrated among the most affluent individuals in the most affluent countries. Moving away from either reduces the positive association of healthy eating.

Our results provide an important wrinkle for policies aimed at changing the nutritional quality of diets. Adjustments to diets without taking into account fundamental causes of socioeconomic status will likely be met with attenuated results.

We compare two important health outcomes across a wide variety of types of countries. We demonstrate that our main conclusions are only detectable when employing a flexible multilevel methodological design.

Women's travel pattern is different from those of men. Women who have both paid employment and unpaid care work have more complex travel patterns. However, land-use policies and urban mobility strategies in the Egyptian context do not consider these differences. This paper analyzes and discusses the travel patterns of the Egyptian working women with children. It examines the difference between men's and women's travel behavior in different income levels. The paper aims at determining the main factors that affect working women's travel patterns within the care economy framework and suggesting recommendations for enhancing women's travel patterns in Greater Cairo Region (GCR).

The methodology relies on conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis using questionnaires and interviews with working women and men from different social/economic levels in two different workplaces in GCR.

The results demonstrate that income level, workplace locations, schools locations, and schools typologies greatly affect working women's travel patterns in GCR.

The study findings will help urban planners and decision-makers to improve working women's mobility to make their daily trips shorter and more accessible to achieve equitable cities through understanding the conducted affecting factors and considering the suggested recommendations.