Empirical indicators of educational equity and equality: A thai case study

The objective of this research is to study the role of educational attainment, educational inequality, and quality of education on income inequality. The hypothesis is the higher educational level and quality of education, the lower income inequality, and the more dispersion of education, the higher inequality of income. This research used ordinary least square technique with cross sectional data of 76 provinces in Thailand, and pooled least square technique with a panel data set of thirteen educational service areas for four periods, 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. The regression results showed that educational factors play roles on income distribution. The higher educational attainment leads to the more inequality of income because an increase in educational attainment is an increase in higher educational level and most people who can access to higher education come from high income family. Thus, higher educational attainment widens income gaps between the rich and the poor during the period of study. The results also presented that the higher quality of education measured by higher expenditure on education could reduce inequality of income by raising marginal productivity and wages of low educated workers. However, educational inequality is insignificant. Moreover, this research also tested Kuznets hypothesis, but this data set cannot confirm the statistically significant relation between economic development and income inequality.

Top income shares and inequality: Evidences from Thailand

PurposeIn middle-income countries, interest in the study of inequalities in health has focused on aggregate types of health outcomes, like rates of mortality. This work moves beyond such measures to focus on disease-specific health outcomes with the use of national health survey data.MethodsCross-sectional data from the national Health and Welfare Survey 2003, covering 52,030 adult aged 15 or older, were analyzed. The health outcomes were the 20 most commonly reported diseases. The age-sex adjusted concentration index (C∗) of ill health was used as a measure of socioeconomic health inequality (values ranging from −1 to +1). A negative (or positive) concentration index shows that a disease was more concentrated among the less well off (or better off). Crude concentration indices (C) for four of the most common diseases were also decomposed to quantify determinants of inequalities.ResultsSeveral diseases, such as malaria (C∗ = −0.462), goiter (C∗ = −0.352), kidney stone (C∗ = −0.261), and tuberculosis (C∗ = −0.233), were strongly concentrated among those with lower incomes, whereas allergic conditions (C∗ = 0.174) and migraine (C∗ = 0.085) were disproportionately reported by the better off. Inequalities were found to be associated with older age, low education, and residence in the rural Northeast and rural North of Thailand.ConclusionsPro-equity health policy in Thailand and other middle-income countries with health surveys can now be informed by national data combining epidemiological, socioeconomic and health statistics in ways not previously possible.

I. INTRODUCTION The persistence of economic inequalities between blacks and whites in the U.S. is striking: blacks experience unemployment rates that are over twice that of whites, black poverty rates have been two to three times the white rate, and black median family income has consistently ranged between 50-60 percent that of white families. These racial disparities are important aspects of the discourse on distributive justice which has focused on the rise in income inequality over the last 25 years. Inter-racial measures of socioeconomic status, however, can easily overshadow the substantial inequality within the black population. It is a salient fact, often ignored in general discussions of income distribution, that the level of income inequality is higher within the black population than within the white population (Smith 1979). Thus, the dimensions of racial inequality extend to within group differences. In the past 25 years there has been a great deal of empirical research into the determinants of urban family income inequality (for example, Murray 1969; Danziger 1976; Hirsch 1982; Bartik 1994). The vast majority of this work has focused on overall family income inequality without respect to race. While some research has been done on income and earnings disparities between blacks and whites in metropolitan areas (Nord 1982, 1982a), there has been virtually no urban-based investigation into the determinants of inequality within the black and white populations.(1) In this paper, the determinants of the inter-urban variation in black and white intra-racial family income inequality are explored by examining metropolitan area data from the 1990 census. In the next section, the magnitude of income disparity within the black and white populations is presented using standard measures of income inequality. Section III develops an empirical model that associates intra-racial inequality with racial socioeconomic characteristics and nonracial urban and regional variables. Section IV contains the regression results and discusses significant differences between the black and white models. The higher level of inequality within the black population is attributed to (1) differing socioeconomic characteristics between blacks and whites; and (2) differences in the marginal impact these variables have on inequality. Section V contains a summary and conclusion. II. INEQUALITY WITHIN THE BLACK AND WHITE POPULATIONS Table 1 reports levels and correlations between measures of intra-racial family income inequality for 148 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) that had at least 5,000 black families in 1990. Since it has been shown that statistical results can vary depending on the measure of inequality employed (Braun 1988), two measures of inequality are reported. In addition to the commonly utilized Gini coefficient, the ratio of the 90th percentile income to the 10th (P90/P10) is considered as an alternative measure of inequality, focusing on the tails of the distribution. The mean values of inequality in the 148 MSAs highlight the significantly higher level of inequality among black families than among white families. The black and white Gini coefficients are 0.429 and 0.375, respectively, and the percentile ratio shows that the black 90th percentile income is 13.11 times that of the black 10th percentile income, while for whites it is substantially lower at 5.92. The correlations between the intra-racial inequality measures reported in Table 1 reveal that the GINI and P90/P10 measures are not perfect proxies for inequality within the black and white populations. More [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 1 OMITTED] importantly, the low correlation between the two Gini coefficients (0.219) and the two percentile ratios (0.186) suggests that the intra-racial socioeconomic characteristics responsible for inequality and the impact these characteristics have in generating inequality may be significantly different for blacks and whites. …

An alternative approach to the measurement of horizontal inequality is developed. This measure of inequality is based on an explicit social welfare function which is formulated so as to be consistent with the basic principles of social choice. The arguments of the social welfare function are welfare functions that depend on prices, total expenditure and the demographic composition of the household. The level of horizontal inequality is defined to be the difference between the level of social welfare attained at a perfect horizontally egalitarian distribution of welfare and the level of social welfare attained at the existing distribution of individual welfare. The level of horizontal inequality induced by the introduction of commodity taxes is evaluated for the United States over the period 1947-85. Copyright 1989 by MIT Press.

Measuring Gender Equality in Education: Lessons from Trends in 43 Countries

Investigating Income Inequality in the United States

Gender equality in education has considerable prominence in a wide range of international treaties and declarations, encompassing those concerned with human rights, gender equality, the expansion of education and the reduction of poverty. Despite this, however, it has not been easy to realise gender equality in education at the national and local level in many countries. Although statistics on rising numbers of girls and boys enrolling in school and the improvements in attainment by many girls suggest large steps towards equality, these often mask persistent inequalities in which gender features prominently. This article examines why the international frameworks relating to gender equality in education are so difficult to realise. The discussion draws mainly on data collected from a three year research project in Kenya and South Africa on how international frameworks concerned with poverty, gender equality and education were negotiated in a range of local settings. 2 The first part of the article reviews different ways in which gender equality in education can be understood, and associates these with contrasting approaches within the relevant international frameworks. The second part distinguishes between: (i) those international frameworks that work with a very restricted notion of gender equality and education, and (ii) those which deploy a more expansive meaning. In the third section some of the findings from a research study in Kenya and South Africa are presented in order to demonstrate which features of the conventions and declarations are implemented in different sites, highlighting how the conceptual distinction between different meanings of gender and equality and forms of international framework have a bearing on the forms of implementation. 1. Conceptualising Gender Equality in Education

The article is devoted to the problem of professional training of future specialists in preschool education at the second (Master's degree) level of higher education in conditions of martial law. It emphasizes that dynamism, innovative forms and methods of teaching Master’s students characterize the modern education system, and, therefore, it requires updating and incorporating modern disciplines into educational and professional programs aimed at ensuring professional mobility, “soft skills”, innovative-communicative competence, and the ability to solve complex professional tasks.The aim of the article is to highlight the experience of the Department of Preschool Pedagogy and Psychology and Special education named after prof. T. I. Ponimanska, in training Master’s students in Preschool Education at Rivne State University of Humanities in conditions of martial law. The article provides a detailed analysis of the changes made to the educational and professional program, taking into account the requirements of the higher education standard for the second (Master’s degree) level of higher education in the field of Preschool Education (specialty 012) and the professional standard “Head (Director) of a Preschool Education Institution”. It also discusses the peculiarities of organizing the educational process in conditions of martial law and the changes introduced to the educational components, considering contemporary requirements. The presentation of the article’s material relies on the extensive use of theoretical methods such as problem-targeted, logical-systemic, and structural-functional analysis, as well as specific search methods including synthesis, forecasting, and generalization.The article concludes that the preparation of future Masters in Preschool Education, as well as directors of preschool institutions, requires fundamental changes and a comprehensive approach. Additionally, the preparation should have an integrated nature and practical orientation, encompassing both theoretical knowledge and practical skills, ensuring the psychological and physical well-being of children, and facilitating effective communication with parents and other professionals responsible for child safety. Future Masters in Preschool Education can effectively work in various conditions, including those of martial law, ensuring the safety and holistic development of children in preschool institutions with only proper training and support for the development of professional skills.Furthermore, using modern technologies, electronic resources, and distance learning tools is relevant, as they are important means of education and communication in today’s world. They allow Masters to access up-to-date information, interact with professionals from different fields and countries to exchange experiences, and learn from the best experts in the field of preschool education.The article’s material will be useful for scientific and pedagogical workers of institutions of higher education and departments that train students of higher education at the second (Master’s degree) level of higher education in order to include experience of national institutions of higher education for the development of their own educational and professional programs.

This chapter reviews the empirical evidence on the levels and trends in income/consumption inequality and poverty in developing countries. It includes a discussion of data sources and measurement issues, evidence on the levels of inequality and poverty across countries and regions, an assessment of trends in these variables since the early 1980s, and a general discussion of their determinants. There has been tremendous progress in the measurement of inequality and poverty in the developing world, although serious problems of consistency and comparability still remain. The available evidence suggests that on average the levels of national income inequality in the developing world increased in the 1980s and 1990s, and declined in the 2000s. There was a remarkable fall in income poverty since the early 1980s, driven by the exceptional performance of China over the whole period, and the generalized improvement in living standards in all the regions of the developing world in the 2000s.

Previous studies documented the existence of substantial inequalities in the utilization of maternal health services across different population subgroups in Ethiopia. Regularly monitoring the state of inequality could enhance efforts to address health inequality in the utilization of maternal health services. Therefore, this study aimed to measure the level of inequalities in the utilization of maternal health services in Ethiopia. The study used data from the Performance Monitoring for Action Ethiopia (PMA Ethiopia) dataset. Longitudinal data was collected from a weighted sample of 1966 postpartum women using multistage stratified cluster sampling techniques between November 2021 to October 2022. We assessed inequality in maternal health services using three indicators: antenatal care four (ANC), skilled birth attendants (SBA), and postnatal care (PNC). Age, economic status, education level, place of residence, and subnational regions were used as dimensions for measuring inequality. The analysis was conducted using Health Equity Assessment Toolkit Plus (HEAT Plus) software. We computed the summary measure of health inequality: Difference (D), Ratio (R), Population Attributable Risk (PAR), and Population Attributable Fraction (PAF). The simple summary measures of inequality difference (D) reported a high level of inequality in the utilization of maternal health services in ANC four, SBA, and PNC across economic, education, residence, and subnational regions. The difference (D) in maternal health service utilization between advantaged and disadvantaged population groups exceeded 20 percentage points in all four dimensions of inequality for the three maternal health indicators. Similarly, the complex summary measures of inequality (PAR and PAF) also showed high levels of inequality in the utilization of ANC four, SBA, and PNC across all four dimensions of inequality. However, there was no age-related inequality in the use of maternal health services. A high level of socioeconomic and geographic area related inequality was observed in the utilization of ANC four, SBA, and PNC services in Ethiopia. Women from socioeconomically disadvantaged subgroups and women from disadvantaged geographic areas significantly lagged behind in the utilization of maternal health services. Therefore, implementing targeted interventions for the most disadvantaged groups can help to reduce inequality in accessing maternal health services.

This paper adds to a growing literature that charts and explains inequality levels in pre-industrial societies. On the basis of a wide variety of primary documents, the degree of inequality is estimated for 32 different residencies, the largest administrative units and comparable to present-day provinces, of late colonial Indonesia. Four different measures of inequality (the Gini, Theil, Inequality Extraction Rate and Top Income Rate) are employed that show consistent results. Variation in inequality levels across late colonial Indonesia is very large, and some residencies have much higher levels of inequality (with, for example, Ginis above 60) than others (with Ginis below 30). This suggests that even within a single colony, levels of inequality may vary substantially and this puts some doubts on the representativeness of using a single number to capture the level of inequality in a large economy. In order to explain the variation across residencies and over time, this paper investigates the role of exports and plantations, so frequently mentioned in the literature. It is shown that both explain a part of the variation in levels of inequality across colonial Indonesia, but that only the rise of plantations can explain changes in inequality levels over time. This points to the importance of the institutional context in which global export trade takes place for the rise of inequality.

Contemporary challenges of society, its dynamic development cause changes in all spheres of life, particularly in education. To obtain a university education in the Ukrainian state, higher Education Standard in specialty 012 Preschool Education for the second (master’s) level of higher education (2020) was approved, which provides for the formation of relevant competencies. The purpose of the study was to analyze the essence of innovations in the professional activities of teachers of preschool educational institutions (PEI). To find out the attitude of students to the implementation of innovations in professional activities, a thematic survey was conducted. The selection of questions and respond options is based on all competencies of the Standard and the materials of theoretical analysis. The sample of the online survey covers the students’ responses from two state universities of Ukraine (n =159), who are obtaining the second (master’s) level of higher education on the educational-professional program “Preschool Education”. Respondents were grouped according to the mode of study. The obtained quantitative and qualitative data revealed the influence of the experience of practical experience in the PEI on the choice of the respond. This determined the necessity to teach students the educational component “Innovation activities in PEI” and the development of corresponding tasks during their teaching practicum in the system of preschool education.

Tobacco promotions are linked to tobacco consumption in adolescents. The aim of this study was to determine knowledge of and exposure and responses to tobacco-promotional activities and factors associated with knowledge among adolescents in a rural setting in Sri Lanka. Seven schools in Polonnaruwa district were randomly selected for this cross-sectional study. Adolescents (n = 500) aged 14-15 years in grade 10 were selected using convenience sampling and studied by using a self-administered questionnaire during June-October 2014. The questions on exposure to tobacco-promotional activities were based on the validated questionnaire of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey. Adolescents were categorized into two levels of knowledge, exposure and responses to tobacco promotions, based on the scores obtained. Selected factors associated with knowledge of tobacco promotions were assessed using univarate and multivariate analyses. The response rate was 99.6% (498/500). The mean age of the adolescents was 14.9 years (standard deviation ±0.37) and the proportion of females was slightly higher (n = 280, 56.2%) than for males. The prevalence of current smoking was 3.2% (n = 16). Half (48.6%, n = 242) of the adolescents had a good level of knowledge of tobacco-promotional activities. Most (64.9%, n = 323) had experienced a low level of exposure to tobacco-promotional activities, while 85.7% (n = 427) indicated that they had responded/would respond assertively to exposure to tobacco promotion. In the univariate analysis, having a mother with a high level of education (odds ratio [OR] 1.742), having a father with a high level of education (OR 1.997) and the student attending a type 1AB school (OR 1.310) were significant factors associated with a good level of knowledge of tobacco-promotional activities. A father with a high level of education (adjusted OR 1.772) and the student attending a type 1AB school (adjusted OR 1.455) were the factors associated with a good level of knowledge for tobacco-promotional activities, when confounding effects of the variables were taken into consideration. Knowledge of tobacco-promotional activities was poor among the adolescents in the rural setting in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, most of the adolescents in the study population indicated that their responses to such exposures were/ would be assertive.

Gender equality in education is essential for human capital formation, social justice, and inclusive economic growth. Despite sustained policy efforts, gender disparities persist across Indian states, particularly at higher levels of education. This study examines the extent and determinants of gender inequality in education across Indian states from 2011–12 to 2024–25, focusing on primary to higher secondary levels. Using state-level panel data from UDISE+, the Census, National Sample Survey, and other government sources, gender inequality is measured through Gross Enrollment Ratios (GER). Descriptive statistics and panel regression analysis reveal that gender parity has largely been achieved at the primary level due to improved access and targeted interventions, but disparities re-emerge at secondary and higher secondary levels because of retention and dropout challenges. Female literacy emerges as the most significant factor in reducing gender gaps, supported by the availability of female teachers, school access, and women’s workforce participation, while infrastructure alone proves insufficient. The study highlights substantial interstate variation and emphasizes the need for state-specific, evidence-based policies to achieve sustainable gender equality in education.