Search results

In the United States, there is little difference in annual income inequality and income mobility between the rural and urban sectors of the economy. This forms a sharp contrast with China where income inequality is greater and income mobility lower among rural households than among urban households. When incomes are averaged over three years and when adjustments are made for the size and composition of households, income inequality among all households differs little between China and the United States in the 1990s. Moreover when pooling rural households and urban households and when measuring annual income inequality and income mobility of the pooled households, the mobility of incomes of households in the United States differs little from that in China. Social welfare functions are posited that allow for a trade-off between increases in income and increases in income inequality. These suggest strong increases in well-being for urban households in China. The corresponding changes in rural China and in the United States are smaller. Four sets of data on households are drawn on to document these findings.

Income inequality in Brazil is high and persistent, explained at least in part by low intergenerational income mobility. Despite the increasing female labor participation, most of the studies consider only father’s income to analyze intergenerational mobility. This chapter aims to analyze the role of mothers in intergenerational income mobility and the differences in mobility patterns between daughters and sons in Brazil. We use information from social mobility supplement of 2014 National Household Sample Survey to estimate intergenerational elasticity of labor income. The results show that the relation between mothers’ and children’s income is almost as high as that of fathers, especially for daughters. Mobility patterns’ analysis reveals no significant differences between daughters and sons. However, gender income inequalities are more pronounced for women from poor families. As returns to education are increasing, the educational advantage of female over male workers seems to offset gender gap for those of richer families. Moreover, the educational mobility between generations was higher for daughters than for sons. Despite that, daughters did not experience greater income mobility than sons. These results suggest that equalizing educational opportunities is important to promote intergenerational income mobility, although not sufficient. Nowadays, women in Brazil are more educated than men, but there exist social barriers to achieve equal payment for similar levels of schooling. Then, there is still room for gendered actions and policies related to improvements in labor market conditions to narrow the gender wage gap between men and women and between workers from richer and poorer families.

Purpose: The paper analyzes the variability of labor incomes in Argentina from mid-1980s to 2005. The magnitude of income instability and its determinants are evaluated under different macroeconomic contexts. It also analyzes how income fluctuations have influenced income distribution. Finally, the income convergence hypothesis is explored.

Methodology/approach: Different quantitative procedures are employed to measure mobility from dynamic information coming from the regular household survey. Four periods are distinguished that are relatively homogeneous. Dynamic pseudo-panels are also considered.

Findings: The growth in occupational instability registered since the mid-1990s led to a high variability of incomes despite the macroeconomic stability enjoyed throughout the nineties. Moreover, the panorama of growing inequality in the distribution of monthly income (the usual measure employed in Argentina) is also appropriate to describe what happened with the changes in the distribution of more permanent incomes. Finally, long-term income mobility in Argentina is scarce, indicating that the income path does not converge to the general mean.

Research limitations/implications (if applicable): Data refer only to Greater Buenos Aires since microdata are not available for the other areas covered by survey for the entire period under analysis. However, results are reasonably representative of the whole urban areas of the country.

Originality/value of paper: This research identifies the relative importance of labor market and macroeconomic factors in explaining income mobility. Moreover, it is for the first time in Argentina that dynamic information coming from panel data and pseudo-panels are analyzed together.

This chapter explores the relation between personal well-being – measured with life satisfaction – and intergenerational mobility in Spain (2017). We start by applying machine learning techniques to overcome traditional data limitations and estimate intergenerational income mobility. Then, by means of several econometric specifications, we find the relation between personal well-being and intergenerational income mobility to be non-significant. This result is robust to several measures of educational and occupational mobility. Contrary to the comparison theory, if Spanish citizens derive well-being benefits or losses from intergenerational mobility, these effects are not permanent and dissipate with time. We find other variables, such as enjoying good health, higher income levels and marriage, to be positively associated with life satisfaction. Overall, personal well-being in Spain is more related to materialistic aspects rather than to the comparison of individuals’ current position against the previous generations’ socio-economic status.

The purpose of this paper is to examine income inequality and income mobility, which have been central to understanding India’s recent economic development.

This paper uses the first two waves of the India Human Development Survey data for the year 2004–2005 and 2011–2012 to analyze income inequality and income mobility using longitudinal data, and is the first to do so at a nationally representative level. In this research paper, we address three related research questions: How have been the patterns of income mobility in India? What are the trends, levels and sources of income inequality in India? and finally And What is the structure of household income mobility?

The paper examines the trends, levels, sources and factors of income inequality and income mobility in India between 2005 and 2012. The results further show the case for high persistence at the top of income distribution but lower persistence at the bottom.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack spatial analysis. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The paper suggests that, in the end, the nature of longer-term well-being is crucial to designing policy interventions to effectively tackle inequality, and economic mobility can be seen as an avenue to long-term equality.

This study can further be extended to look at polarization issues at the national and sub-national levels.

This paper shows the analytical framework of additive decomposition of income mobility out of two sources, namely mobility due to the transfer of income within given structure and mobility due to economic growth or contraction in rural and urban India.

This paper aims to illustrate the trends of income growth and income inequality and examines the dynamics and determinants of income mobility in rural China from 2003 to 2006.

The authors decomposed the Gini coefficient by different sources and analyzed income mobility using the method of income transition matrix. The authors then estimated the effects of demographic variables, labor migration, and other household characteristics on income growth using a dynamic panel data model.

The study obtained important findings on income mobility and income inequality in rural China. First, annual income inequality in rural China was smoothed during this period after a decline from 2003, with the largest contribution from the income of migration work. Second, income mobility remained rather stable and relatively high, with higher mobility in the interior provinces than in the coastal provinces. Third, the income levels of the poor and the wealthy households converged during this period after controlling other factors. Fourth, income growth depends on in the households' demographic composition, their human capital accumulation, and their chances of getting migration jobs.

The sound econometric methods applied to the most current rural household survey data provide important contributions to the literature of income inequality and income mobility in China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-term differences in household income and their causes in the people’s commune through a panel of micro-data.

The income mobility method (including static Gini mobility and dynamic income transition matrix) as well as the multinomial logit model) are employed in this paper.

Empirical results indicate that differences in household income were relatively low during the people’s commune period. In addition, both Gini mobility and income transition matrix analyses show that income mobility in the long term was faster than that in the short term, suggesting income mobility was beneficial for low-income earners in the long term, i.e., there was an pro-poorness. The major factor influencing household income was the structure of family population, not the quantity of labor input.

This paper is the first using income mobility method to study farmers’ income disparity and conducting factor decomposition on it in the people’s commune period. The micro-data on production team level applied in the paper is of high value, and the paper is helpful to understand the low efficiency of the people’s commune.

The author proposes analyzing the dynamics of income positions using dynamic panel ordered probit models. The author disentangles, simultaneously, the roles of state dependence and heterogeneity (observed and non-observed) in explaining income position persistence, such as poverty persistence and affluence persistence. The author applies the approach to Chile exploiting longitudinal data from the P-CASEN 2006–2009. First, the author finds that income position mobility at the bottom and the top of the income distribution is much higher than expected, showing signs that income mobility in the case of Chile might be connected to economic insecurity. Second, the observable individual characteristics have a much stronger impact than true state dependence to explain individuals’ current income position in the income distribution extremes.

Recent evidence on the impact of the crisis on developed countries shows that changes in income inequality and poverty have been relatively small in spite of the macroeconomic heterogeneity of the recession across different economies. However, when evaluating individual perceptions linked to the crisis any changes in the chances to scale up or lose ground in the income ladder are also crucial. Our aim in this paper is to analyze to what extent the recession has had an impact on individual equivalent incomes and, in particular, on the prevalence of downward mobility in two developed countries where job losses have been large. We find that income losses have increased, particularly in Spain, and while age and education are key determinants of the probability of experiencing an income loss in both countries, the presence of children only increases the probability of an income loss in Spain.

The purpose of this paper is to question the frequently heard claims of a negative relationship between inequality and intergenerational mobility (such as the “Great Gatsby Curve” by Alan Krueger) and to propose entrepreneurship as the neglected prime countervailing force against the putative advantages of the rich.

A critical examination of evidences marshalled to support the case for a negative relationship between inequality and mobility, in terms of the appropriateness of statistical inferences and the consistency between implications and observations. The paper adopts alternative approach of Austrian economic in emphasizing the role of entrepreneurship in generating mobility.

The putative negative relationship between inequality and mobility is not supported by evidence. The result is partly that egalitarians tend to skip close examination when they run into evidence that seems to support their preconception. It is also partly that the dominant tradition in economics, based on the model of efficient allocation of given resources, induces them to overlook entrepreneurship, the prime wealth creator and generator of mobility.

The research outlines an argument that the rich do not have advantage in entrepreneurship because it depends not on the ownership of currently valued resources, but on the discovery and exploitation of profitable opportunities. This claim is made based on Kirznerian perspective and author’s own theory of inference and learning process. However, it would be nice to able to provide empirical evidence of this claim made in the paper.

Many policies of redistribution, based on the belief that increase in inequality (as measured by Gini coefficient) signifies a diminution of intergenerational mobility, should be re-examined since the alleged negative relationship between inequality and intergenerational mobility turns out to be untrue. For greater intergenerational mobility, entrepreneurs should be encouraged, by allowing them to experiment freely.

Emphasizing the role of entrepreneurship in intergenerational mobility and the dealing with the question of whether or not the rich would have advantage in entrepreneurship is original to this paper.