Trade union’s power and income distribution: Evidence from Chile

The role of income inequality on factors associated with male physical Intimate Partner Violence perpetration: A meta-analysis

To examine whether per capita income and income inequality are independently associated with teen birth rate in populous U.S. counties. This study used 1990 U.S. Census data and National Center for Health Statistics birth data. Income inequality was measured with the 90:10 ratio, a ratio of percent of cumulative income held by the richest and poorest population deciles. Linear regression and analysis of variance were used to assess associations between county-level average income, income inequality, and teen birth rates among counties with population greater than 100,000. Among teens aged 15-17, income inequality and per capita income were independently associated with birth rate; the mean birth rate was 54 per 1,000 in counties with low income and high income inequality, and 19 per 1,000 in counties with high income and low inequality. Among older teens (aged 18-19) only per capita income was significantly associated with birth rate. Although teen childbearing is the result of individual behaviors, these findings suggest that community-level factors such as income and income inequality may contribute significantly to differences in teen birth rates.

Rising income inequality is taking a toll on the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of people worldwide. Prior research that examines how consumption bears on the relationship between income inequality and SWB has found that people facing high income inequality tend to increase material acquisition. This response often fails to improve SWB, however, and instead can further undermine SWB if people overspend and accumulate debt. Prior research therefore leaves open important questions about whether there is a role for consumption and material possessions in maintaining SWB under high income inequality and, specifically, what that role might be. In my thesis, I examine whether certain possessions – specifically, favorite possessions – might help consumers cope with income inequality. The key finding is that the negative effect of income inequality on SWB is offset among consumers who focus their attention on their favorite possessions. I argue and show that favorite possessions have this buffering effect because their value is idiosyncratic and incommensurable with the value of other possessions. The incommensurability of a favorite possession is important because a key reason why income inequality undermines SWB is that it makes people feel deprived relative to others. However, I find that focusing on favorite possessions minimizes consumers’ tendencies to compare themselves to others, and hence, minimizes the effect of income inequality on relative deprivation and SWB. Data collected across ten countries show that the negative effect of income inequality on SWB is mitigated when consumers attend to their favorite possessions. A longitudinal intervention that trains consumers to focus on their favorite things yields benefits that persist after a delay. Moreover, focusing on favorite possessions buffers SWB among those who perceive income inequality to be high, as well as those who live in countries with high objective income inequality. The beneficial effect of a favorite possession under income inequality is analogous to that of an experiential purchase – which has been shown to generate greater SWB than a material purchase, in general – suggesting that favorite possessions share characteristics of experiential purchases. Findings of this thesis have implications for consumer wellbeing: consumers facing high income inequality can in fact derive happiness from material possessions, and not necessarily by purchasing new goods or focusing on their accumulated wealth. Rather, happiness can come from focusing on a few favorite things even when contextual factors (here, income inequality) tend to make people feel deprived relative to others.

Background: The hypothesis that a high income inequality on a societal level is associated with poor healthoutcomes has been both rejected and accepted in empirical studies. Whether the influence of economiccircumstances on health operates at the individual level or societal level has important implications on policyand intervention alternatives. The objective of this study was to analyse the relationship between incomeinequality and mortality in Swedish municipalities and if the relationship varies depending on the meanincome or on the time-lag between income inequality and mortality.Methods: The study was based on register data on mean income and income inequality (Gini coefficients)from Statistics Sweden 1982 and 1998, aggregated on the municipality level. Data on age-standardised deathrates per 100,000 persons were obtained for 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998 and 2002. The analysis on 1998 was atest of the robustness of the results.Results: The relationship between high income inequality in 1982 and mortality in 1983 was negative with asimilar relationship in 1998. Using latency periods, the results show a decreasing trend of mortality in relationto higher Gini coefficients. A positive relationship between Gini and mean income implies that municipalitieswith larger income distribution also had a higher mean income and vice versa.Conclusions: High income inequality does not have a negative effect on mortality in Swedish municipalities.The municipalities with high income inequality have also high mean income as opposed to many othercountries. The income level seems to be more substantial for mortality than the income inequality.

Income inequality is a more complex problem than poverty. The existence of income inequality will hamper the process of economic development and disrupt people's welfare. This study aims to determine the effect of the tourism sector on income inequality in the Regency / City of Central Java Province using the variables of the number of tourists, the number of tourism workers, economic growth, and Human Development Index (HD). This study uses Quantile Panel Regression using time series data 2015-2022 and cross-section data of 35 regencies/cities in Central Java Province. Based on the results of the research, it can be seen that the number of tourists has a positive and significant effect on middle income inequality, but has no effect on low and high income inequality, tourism labour has a negative and significant effect on low income inequality, but has no effect on middle and high income inequality, economic growth has a positive and significant effect on low income inequality, but has no effect on middle and high income inequality, HDI has a negative and significant effect on low income inequality and positive on high income inequality, but HDI has no effect on middle income inequality

The aim of the study is to compare whether there is a significant difference between the PISA exam averages of countries with the highest income inequality and countries with the lowest income inequality and to determine whether there is a significant relationship between income inequality and PISA success. The study group was selected from among the countries with the highest and lowest income inequality according to the GINI index using the contrast sampling technique, which is a purposive sampling technique. T-test, correlation and simple linear regression analyses were conducted on income inequality and PISA scores. The average PISA scores of the 12 countries with the highest income inequality and the 12 countries with the lowest income inequality were compared with the average scores of the same countries regarding income inequality. There is a significant difference between the average PISA scores of the countries with the highest and lowest income inequality. There is a significant and inverse relationship between income inequality and PISA success. While income inequality increases, PISA success decreases, while PISA success increases as income inequality decreases. According to the simple linear regression model, income inequality predicts PISA success significantly as the only independent variable. Income inequality is a determinant of students' academic success.

This study examined associations between income inequality and mortality in 282 US metropolitan areas. Income inequality measures were calculated from the 1990 US Census. Mortality was calculated from National Center for Health Statistics data and modeled with weighted linear regressions of the log age-adjusted rate. Excess mortality between metropolitan areas with high and low income inequality ranged from 64.7 to 95.8 deaths per 100,000 depending on the inequality measure. In age-specific analyses, income inequality was most evident for infant mortality and for mortality between ages 15 and 64. Higher income inequality is associated with increased mortality at all per capita income levels. Areas with high income inequality and low average income had excess mortality of 139.8 deaths per 100,000 compared with areas with low inequality and high income. The magnitude of this mortality difference is comparable to the combined loss of life from lung cancer, diabetes, motor vehicle crashes, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, suicide, and homicide in 1995. Given the mortality burden associated with income inequality, public and private sector initiatives to reduce economic inequalities should be a high priority.

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the impact that national income and income inequality in high and low income countries have on the relationship between dental caries and sugar consumption. Methods: An ecological study design was used in this study of 73 countries. The mean decayed, missing, or filled permanent teeth (DMFT) for 12-year-old children were obtained from the WHO Oral Health Country/Area Profile Programme. United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization data were used for per capita sugar consumption. Gross national incomes per capita based on purchasing power parity and the Gini coefficient were obtained from World Bank data. Bivariate and multivariate linear regression analysis was performed to estimate the associations between mean DMFT and per capita sugar consumption in different income and income inequality countries. Results: Bivariate and multivariate regression analysis showed that countries with a high national income and low income inequality have a strong negative association between sugar consumption and caries (B = –2.80, R² = 0.17), whereas countries with a low income and high income inequality have a strong positive relationship between DMFT and per capita sugar consumption (B = –0.89, R² = 0.20). Conclusion: The relationship between per capita consumption of sugar and dental caries is modified by the absolute level of income of the country, but not by the level of income inequality within a country.

Prior correlational research demonstrated that in a society with high income inequality, people are more likely to seek high status. The present study aimed to establish a causal relation between income inequality and status seeking by investigating the effects of perceived income inequality on the pursuit of positional goods. Moreover, we investigated whether the relation between perceived income inequality and the pursuit of positional goods is moderated by subjective social status. We manipulated high versus low income inequality and found that perceived income inequality increased the pursuit of positional goods among participants with low social status, but not among participants with high social status. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Increasing mortality from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related liver disease (collectively referred to as deaths of despair) is a critical public health crisis. Income inequality and social mobility have been separately associated with all-cause mortality; however, no studies have examined their interaction with these preventable deaths. To assess the interaction between income inequality and social mobility with deaths of despair among working-age Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White populations. This cross-sectional study analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER (Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research) database on county-level deaths of despair from 2000 to 2019 across racial and ethnic groups. Statistical analysis was performed from January 8 to May 20, 2023. The primary exposure of interest was county-level income inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient. Another exposure was race- and ethnicity-specific absolute social mobility. Tertiles for the Gini coefficient and social mobility were created to evaluate the dose-response association. The main outcomes were adjusted risk ratios (RRs) of deaths from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholic liver disease. The interaction between income inequality and social mobility was formally tested on both the additive and multiplicative scales. The sample included 788 counties for Hispanic populations, 1050 counties for non-Hispanic Black populations, and 2942 counties for non-Hispanic White populations. Over the study period, 152 350, 149 589, and 1 250 156 deaths of despair were recorded for working-age Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White populations, respectively. Compared with the reference group (counties with low income inequality and high social mobility), counties with greater income inequality (high inequality: RR, 1.26 [95% CI, 1.24-1.29] for Hispanic populations; RR, 1.18 [95% CI, 1.15-1.20] for non-Hispanic Black populations; and RR, 1.22 [95% CI, 1.21-1.23] for non-Hispanic White populations) or less social mobility (low mobility: RR, 1.79 [95% CI, 1.76-1.82] for Hispanic populations; RR, 1.64 [95% CI, 1.61-1.67] for non-Hispanic Black populations; and RR, 1.38 [95% CI, 1.38-1.39] for non-Hispanic White populations) had higher RRs for deaths of despair. In counties with high income inequality and low social mobility, positive interactions were observed on the additive scale for Hispanic populations (relative excess risk due to interaction [RERI], 0.27 [95% CI, 0.17-0.37]), non-Hispanic Black populations (RERI, 0.36 [95% CI, 0.30-0.42]), and non-Hispanic White populations (RERI, 0.10 [95% CI, 0.09-0.12]). In contrast, positive interactions on the multiplicative scale were found only for non-Hispanic Black populations (ratio of RRs, 1.24 [95% CI, 1.18-1.31]) and non-Hispanic White populations (ratio of RRs, 1.03 [95% CI, 1.02-1.05]), but not for Hispanic populations (ratio of RRs, 0.98 [95% CI, 0.93-1.04]). In the sensitivity analyses using continuous Gini coefficient and social mobility, a positive interaction was observed between higher income inequality and lower social mobility with deaths of despair on both the additive and multiplicative scales for all 3 racial and ethnic groups. This cross-sectional study found that the joint exposure of unequal income distribution and lack of social mobility was associated with additional risks for deaths of despair, suggesting that addressing the underlying social and economic conditions is crucial in responding to the epidemic of deaths of despair.

BackgroundIn advanced economies, economic factors have been found to be associated with many health outcomes, including health-related quality of life (HRQL), and people’s health is affected more by income inequality than by absolute income. However, few studies have examined the association of income inequality and absolute income with HRQL in transitional economies using individual data. This paper focuses on the effects of county or district income inequality and absolute income on the HRQL measured by EQ-5D and the differences between rural and urban regions in Shaanxi province, China.MethodsData were collected from the 2008 National Health Service Survey conducted in Shaanxi, China. The EQ-5D index based on Japanese weights was employed as a health indicator. The income inequality was calculated on the basis of self-reported income. The special requirements for complex survey data analysis were considered in the bivariate analysis and linear regression models.ResultsThe mean of the EQ-5D index was 94.6. The EQ-5D index of people with low income was lower than that in the high-income group (for people in the rural region: 93.2 v 96.1, P < 0.01; for people in the urban region: 95.5 v 96.8, P < 0.01). Compared with people with moderate inequality, the EQ-5D index of those with high inequality was relatively lower (for people living in the rural region: 91.1 v 95.8, P < 0.01; for people living in the urban region: 95.6 v 97.3, P < 0.01). Adjusted by age, gender, education, marital status, employment, medical insurance, and chronic disease, all the coefficients of the low-income group and high income inequality were significantly negative. After stratifying by income group, all the effects of high income inequality remained negative in both income groups. However, the coefficients of the models in the high income group were not statistically significant.ConclusionIncome inequality has damaging effects on HRQL in Shaanxi, China, especially for people with low income. In addition, people living in rural regions were more vulnerable to economic factors.

Income inequality and youth pregnancies in Brazil: a regression analysis

Untangling child welfare inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England

Income inequality and self-rated health in Stockholm, Sweden: A test of the ‘income inequality hypothesis’ on two levels of aggregation

ObjectivesThis study empirically investigates the effects of income inequality and income redistribution policy on country‐level subjective well‐being.MethodsThe paper uses panel data of 134 countries from 2005 to 2017. The fixed effect model with time and country dummies is employed.ResultsWe find that a higher inequality level significantly deteriorates happiness in a country with high income inequality, while it does not affect happiness in a country with a low level of inequality. In addition, stronger redistributive policies improve subjective well‐being of countries that have high income inequality, while the policies do not have significant effect on subjective well‐being in countries with relatively low‐income inequality. Furthermore, this paper finds that people are affected by relative levels of income inequality as income grows: people in developed countries may have higher standard for income equality compared with those in developing countries.ConclusionsThe policy implication of this paper is that an active income redistribution policy can improve the country level subjective well‐being if a country's income inequality level is higher than its peer group, regardless of whether it is a developed or developing country.