The Origins and Dynamics of Inequality: Sex, Politics, and Ideology

Conceicao [1] found empirical support for a relationship between levels of GDP per capita and levels of inequality conforming to an augmented Kuznets curve, corresponding to a cubic augmentation of the traditional quadratic functional form first proposed by Kuznets [2]. Inspired by Galbraith [3], we analyse the dynamics of inequality dividing, for each country, the industries into two sectors those that are more technologically intensive are part of the K (for knowledge) sector, with the remaining industries being part of the C (for consumption) sector. We find that the between K and C sectors component of inequality is positively associated with income per capita, the within C sector component is negatively associated with income, and that the K sector component follows a cubic relationship similar to the augmented Kuznets hypothesis. These results help to understand the drivers of the dynamics of overall inequality. As a country grows richer, the earnings in the K sector increase relatively to the C sector. This description of the dynamics of inequality, and its relationship with technology, differs from the skill-biased technological change hypothesis, since technology is not considered to be a radio wave affecting inequality through the mediation of returns to skills, but rather is considered to be a fundamental, characteristic, differentiating industries in the way they generate profits and earnings.

RESUMENLa salud colectiva ha aportado perspectivas analíticas de gran riqueza para comprender la determinación social de la salud y cómo las dinámicas de desigualdad, inequidad e iniquidad son productoras de padecimientos, enfermedades, morbilidad y mortalidad. Desde esta mirada, en este trabajo se identifican y analizan modalidades de apropiación y uso de distintas hormonas e intervenciones de modificación corporal de la población travesti y trans en Argentina, con el propósito de visibilizar las situaciones de vulnerabilidad que puedan estar implicadas en estas prácticas, tanto aquellas realizadas fuera del sistema de salud como las que tuvieron acompañamiento profesional en una institución. Se adoptó una estrategia metodológica cuantitativa, con un diseño descriptivo, observacional y de corte transversal. En 2023, se realizó un relevamiento a través de un cuestionario a nivel federal a personas travestis y trans mayores de 16 años (n=1.196). Los datos analizados dan cuenta de procesos de vulnerabilidad que no se extienden de manera homogénea en toda la población y que responden a desigualdades en salud.

Risk, uncertainty, and the dynamics of inequality

When a lengthy book is widely discussed in academic circles and the popular media, it is probably inevitable that the arguments of the book will be simplified in the telling and retelling. In the case of my book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014), a common simplification of the main theme is that because the rate of return on capital r exceeds the growth rate of the economy g, the inequality of wealth is destined to increase indefinitely over time. In my view, the magnitude of the gap between r and g is indeed one of the important forces that can explain historical magnitudes and variations in wealth inequality. However, I do not view r > g as the only or even the primary tool for considering changes in income and wealth in the 20th century, or for forecasting the path of income and wealth inequality in the 21st century. In this essay, I will take up several themes from my book that have perhaps become attenuated or garbled in the ongoing discussions of the book, and will seek to re-explain and re-frame these themes. First, I stress the key role played in my book by the interaction between beliefs systems, institutions, and the dynamics of inequality. Second, I briefly describe my multidimensional approach to the history of capital and inequality. Third, I review the relationship and differing causes between wealth inequality and income inequality. Fourth, I turn to the specific role of r > g in the dynamics of wealth inequality: specifically, a larger r − g gap will amplify the steady-state inequality of a wealth distribution that arises out of a given mixture of shocks. Fifth, I consider some of the scenarios that affect how r − g might evolve in the 21st century, including rising international tax competition, a growth slowdown, and differential access by the wealthy to higher returns on capital. Finally, I seek to clarify what is distinctive in my historical and political economy approach to institutions and inequality dynamics, and the complementarity with other approaches.

We modify the model developed by Ray, D. (2006), On the dynamics of inequality, Economic Theory in the sense that the technology for education is convex but involves uncertainty. More specifically, we assume that the probability of successful education is an increasing an concave function of the amount of educational investment. It is shown that equilibrium paths are characterized as the solutions of a discrete-time dynamical system, that under generic parameter constellations the steady states of this dynamical system are isolated, and that the equilibrium paths may exhibit damped oscillations around a steady state. All of these findings are in contrast to the results derived by Ray, D. (2006), On the dynamics of inequality, Economic Theory for the model with a deterministic but non-convex education technology.

Whereas President Barack Obama identified inequality as “the defining challenge of our time,” this book claims more: it is the defining issue of all human history. The struggle over inequality has been the underlying force driving human history’s unfolding. Drawing on the dynamics of inequality, this book reinterprets history and society. Beyond according inequality the central role in human history, this book is novel in two other respects. First, transcending the general failure of social scientists and historians to anchor their work in explicit theories of human behavior, this book grounds the origins and dynamics of inequality in evolutionary psychology, or, more specifically, Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Second, this book is novel in according central importance to the critical historical role of ideology in legitimating inequality, a role typically ignored or given little attention by social scientists and historians. Because of the central role of inequality in history, inequality’s explosion over the past 45 years has not been an anomaly. It is a return to the political dynamics by which elites have, since the rise of the state, taken practically everything for themselves, leaving all others with little more than the means with which to survive. Due to elites’ persuasive ideology, even after workers in advanced capitalist countries gained the franchise to become the overwhelming majority of voters, inequality continued to increase. The anomaly is that the only intentional politically driven decline in inequality occurred between the 1930s and 1970s following the Great Depression’s partial delegitimation (this should remain delegitimation globally) of elites’ ideology.

This chapter examines whether rising income inequality is the stylised fact for the process of structural transformation by revisiting classical accounts on various theories of normative inequality dynamics, modernisation, and endogenous growth. In addition, a complex interaction between transformational process and income inequality is analysed by exploring the multidimensions of inequality dynamics, including social, economic, political, and moral. This critical review allows us to conclude that rising income inequality is far from inevitable by introducing a proposal for what it calls Augmented Inequality Dynamics which attempts to systematise the endogenous process within a society, underpinned by these multidimensional aspects. Once the inequality dynamics are formed as historically driven systems of social, economic, and political relations that frame the regulation and coordination mechanism that governs a society, the dynamics can be so evolutionary in a way that they structurally transform themselves by interacting with various dimensions and institutions to shape their own pathway. This explains how income inequality is used to incentivise or restrain the process of various societal interactions by itself going Up and Down repeatedly in the context of structural transformation.

Comparative spatial inequality dynamics: The case of Mexico and the United States

The subject of the research is the economic inequality dynamics. The purpose of the research was statistical verification of the main factors affecting the dynamics of inequality in the digital economy. The research methodology includes the socio-synergic approach and the laws of mathematical statistics. The result of the research was a critical review of S. Kuznets’s views on the impact of economic growth on the dynamics of economic inequality. The conclusion made by T. Picketti that the U-shaped Kuznets curve transforms into the S-shaped curve is confirmed. It is proved that the contribution of the economic growth factor to the dynamics of the economic inequality is not predominant in the total system of all factors affecting the inequality dynamics. It is concluded that the economic growth resulting from technological innovations in the digital economy will not automatically lead to alleviation of the economic inequality; when modeling the social inequality, it is necessary to take into account the impact of such factors as the reallocation policy, particularly, the income taxation, the degree of social activity and good or poor organization of parties in labor relations.

The dynamics of inequality are studied in a model of human capital accumulation with credit constraints. This model admits a multiplicity of steady state skill ratios that exhibit varying degrees of inequality across households. The main result studies equilibrium paths. It is shown that an equilibrium sequence of skill ratios must converge monotonically to the smallest steady state that exceeds the initial ratio for that sequence. Convergence is “gradual" in that the steady state is not achieved in finite time. On the other hand, if the initial skill ratio exceeds the largest steady state, convergence to a steady state is immediate.

Growing interest in inequality has generated an outpouring of scholarly research and has brought many discussions on the subject into the public realm. Surprisingly, most of these studies and discussions rely on a narrow set of indicators to measure inequality. Most of the time a single summary measure of inequality is considered: the Gini coefficient. This is surprising not only because there are many ways to measure inequality, but mostly because the Gini coefficient has only limited success in its ability to generate the amount and type of data required to analyze the complex patterns and dynamics of inequality within and across countries. Often, in defense of the use of the Gini coefficient, it is argued that this popular indicator has a readily intuitive interpretation. While from a formal point of view most measures of inequality are closely interrelated, at an intuitive level this interrelationship is rarely highlighted. This paper suggests an intuitive interpretation for the Theil index, a measure of inequality with unique properties that makes it a powerful instrument to produce data and to analyze patterns and dynamics of inequality. Since the potential of the Theil index to generate rich data sets has been analyzed elsewhere (Conceicao and Galbraith, 1998), here we will focus on the intuitive interpretation of the Theil index and on its potential for analytical work. The discussion will be accompanied throughout with empirical applications, and concludes with the description of a simple software application that can be used to compute the Theil index at different levels of aggregation of the individuals that compose the distribution.

IntroductionAlthough Ethiopia has already achieved a remarkable progress in reducing under-five mortality in the last decades, undernutrition among children is still a common problem in this country. Socioeconomic inequalities in health outcomes in Ethiopia have been thus of focus in academia and policy spheres for a while now. This study provides new evidence on child undernutrition inequalities in Ethiopia using longitudinal perspective.MethodUsing three round of household panel survey (from 2012 to 2016), we use concentration index (associated curve), different mobility index approaches for measuring inequalities and its dynamics, and decomposition method to identify contributing factors.ResultsIn all concentration index computing approaches and socioeconomic status ranking variables, the concentration indices are significant with negative value. This implies that in either of short-run or long-run inequality estimates, the burden of unequal distribution of undernutrition remains on the poor with significant difference across regions. While employing different SES ranking variables, the difference in the concentration indices is only found significant in case of Height-for-age Z-score. It signifies that relatively higher inequality is measured using consumption as ranking variable. Significant difference in inequality is also shown across regions. With respect to dynamics of inequalities, results on mobility indices computed based on Allanson et al. (Longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequality. Dundee Discussion Working Paper No. 214, 2010) approach show that inequality remain stable (persistent) in Height-for- age Z-score, and reduction of inequality in Weight-for- age Z-score while in case of Weight-for- height Z-score, there is no clear trend over subsequent waves. Results on decomposition of inequalities show that the major contributors are wealth index, consumption and mother’s education.ConclusionThe argument of the choice of welfare indicator can have a large and significant impact on measured socioeconomic inequalities in a health variable which it depends on the variable examined. Employing longitudinal perspective rather than weighted average of cross-sectional data is justifiable to see the dynamic of inequality in child malnutrition. In both socioeconomic status ranking variables, the bulk of inequality in malnutrition is caused by inequality in socioeconomic status in which it disfavours the poor in both cases. This calls for enhancing the policy measures that narrow socioeconomic gaps between groups in the population and targeting on early childhood intervention and nutrition sensitive.

This paper addresses the dynamics of income inequality, both within and across countries, using an endogenous growth model with North–South trade and endogenous educational choice. The dynamics of income inequality is found to depend on the ability of workers to adapt to new technologies, captured by the quality of education. For developing countries with low quality of education, I find Southern trade liberalization leads to: (1) an overall decline in effective human capital; (2) an inverted U-shape transition of income inequality, where within-country inequality increases in the initial periods following a reduction in trade barriers; and (3) divergence in terms of average income in the short and long run. However, in cases where the South has a high quality of education, workers are better equipped to adapt to new technologies, and trade liberalization induces an U-shape dynamic transition of within-country income inequality, where income inequality can decline in the transition. This paper highlights the critical role the quality of education plays in explaining the variations in the observed dynamics of income inequality in developing countries.

Experts examine the dynamics of poverty and inequality in Latin America and policies to address them using new tools and data. High inequality in incomes and assets and persistent poverty continue to plague Latin America and remain a central economic policy challenge for Latin American policymakers. At the same time, dramatically improved methods and data allow researchers to analyze these problems and how they are affected by economic policy. In this book, experts on Latin American economic affairs use these new approaches to examine the dynamics of poverty and inequality in Latin America and the ability of policy to address them. Contributors first analyze the historical evolution of inequality in Latin America, examining such topics as the origins of inequality in colonial land distribution, the impact of educational opportunities on earnings inequality in Brazil, and racial discrimination in Brazil's labor market. Contributors then use sophisticated panel data techniques to analyze the regional dynamics of poverty and inequality in Peru and Brazil, considering whether there are spatial poverty traps and, if so, what determines such traps. Finally, contributors use innovative impact evaluation and modeling techniques to examine specific policy issues: devaluation and dollarization in Bolivia, the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico, and the distributional effect of Brazil's tax-benefit system. Contributors Rozane Bezerra de Siquiera, Jere R. Behrman, Denis Cogneau, Philippe De Vreyer, Ewout Frankema, Jérémie Gignoux, Javier Herrera, Herwig Immervoll, Stephan Klasen, Phillippe G. Leite, Horacio Levy, Sandrine Mesplé-Somps, José Ricardo Nogueira, Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann, Cathal O'Donoghue, Susan W. Parker, Rainer Schweickert, Gilles Spielvogel, Rainer Thiele, Petra E. Todd, Manfred Wiebelt

Introduction Modern Analysis aims to bring to the reader a comprehensive account from undergraduate subjects in measure theory and basic functional analysis to advanced topics studied in graduate courses. Among the topics we cover are measure theory, basic functional analysis, single operator theory, spectral theory (of bounded and unbounded operators), semigroups of operators, Banach algebras, C*-algebras and their standard constructions, von Neumann algebras, probability and mathematical statistics, and partial differential equations. The book can serve motivated students interested in these areas for self-study, as well as professional researchers as a reference.