Greater Inequality Research Articles

Emergence and Persistence of Inefficient States

Inefficiencies in the bureaucratic organization of the state are often viewed as important factors in retarding economic development. Why certain societies choose or end up with such inefficient organizations has received very little attention, however. In this paper, we present a simple theory of the emergence and persistence of inefficient states. The society consists of rich and poor individuals. The rich are initially in power, but expect to transition to democracy, which will choose redistributive policies. Taxation requires the employment of bureaucrats. We show that, under certain circumstances, by choosing an inefficient state structure, the rich may be able to use patronage and capture democratic politics. This enables them to reduce the amount of redistribution and public good provision in democracy. Moreover, the inefficient state creates its own constituency and tends to persist over time. Intuitively, an inefficient state structure creates more rents for bureaucrats than would an efficient state structure. When the poor come to power in democracy, they will reform the structure of the state to make it more efficient so that higher taxes can be collected at lower cost and with lower rents for bureaucrats. Anticipating this, when the society starts out with an inefficient organization of the state, bureaucrats support the rich, who set lower taxes but also provide rents to bureaucrats. We show that in order to generate enough political support, the coalition of the rich and the bureaucrats may not only choose an inefficient organization of the state, but they may further expand the size of bureaucracy so as to gain additional votes. The model shows that an equilibrium with an inefficient state is more likely to arise when there is greater inequality between the rich and the poor, when bureaucratic rents take intermediate values and when individuals are sufficiently forward-looking.

The Nixon administration and the death of Allende's Chile: a case of assisted suicide

In this revealing history of Allende's Chile, Jonathan Haslam uncovers the actual involvement of Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the CIA in that country's struggle for political and economic stability. The story begins by tracing the trajectory of the communist and socialist parties from the pre-war period through to the dramatic election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile in 1970, in a country long accustomed to political democracy but divided by great inequality of income. It weaves in an account of a new force linked to Castro's Cuba, and elucidates the longstanding politicization of the Chilean armed forces through mere talk of action in the early 1960s to the attempted coup d'etat of 1969 and the coup of 1973. It highlights the personal profile of Allende and his close ties to Cuba, and shows Soviet indifference to the fate of the regime during a period of emerging detente with the United States, which meant enduring isolation for this precarious socialist experiment. In this tragic tale of assisted suicide, The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile underlines the chronic mismanagement of the economy in the drive to socialism on the back of a minority franchise. It deepens our understanding of close US involvement in attempts to block the formation of the Unidad Popular government, and how it then attempted to bring down the regime by massive subsidies to nationwide strikes, engineering a coup led by the navy behind the back even of CIA stations in Santiago. Our hand doesn't show on this one... - Nixon to Kissinger, 11.50am, 16 September 1973, following the death of Salvador Allende

Imagined Inequalities: Representations of Discrimination and Exclusion in Latin America

This article analyses the subaltern representations of inequality in Latin America. I argue that these representations 1) synthesize complex social processes into simple, dramatic images with emotional and ethical elements; 2) resort to the historical memory of past abuses in order to interpret contemporary grievances; 3) delegitimize privileges and hierarchies, presenting them as the fruits of corruption, discrimination and plundering; 4) exonerate those who occupy subordinate positions, in contrast to the hegemonic narratives which attribute inequality to the vices and deficiencies of the poor or to the supposed inferiority of Latin Americans, women, and indigenous communities; and, finally, 5) are significant for their assistance in understanding the cognitive maps of the agents confronting the greatest inequality of income in the world.

Exploring ethical approaches to evaluate future technology scenarios

The integration of technology into the workplace has resulted in a long trend of changing working conditions, from agriculture to today’s growing “knowledge economy.” This latest development depends on information technology, which may continue to evolve through eventual convergence with nanotechnology and biotechnology. Knowledge work places more emphasis on an expanded skill set, as opposed to the smaller set of specialized skills typically needed in an industrial economy. Future technological progress might lead to further enhancement of human potential or to even greater inequality (individual and national) in income distribution, generating even larger pressures toward the divisions in society. This is illustrated by recently proposed scenarios of accelerated and logistic growth of technological progress. In an attempt to understand these dynamics, a simple model is constructed to clarify a possible relationship between technology and social systems. The model, based on the technology maturation process, focuses on the delay in social systems in responding to a technological change. Examples of current problems of technology and social issues are reviewed in the model’s context. Some potential approaches to framing these problems from an ethical viewpoint are reviewed, including applying Rawlsian concepts of fairness and the “veil of ignorance” and applying a simple discount rate to balance perceived future risks, technological solutions, and uncertainty.

Learning from the past to inform the future – A survey of consultant nurses in emergency care

This paper reports the findings of a survey of UK consultant nurses in emergency care. The purpose of the survey was to elicit information regarding level of preparation for the consultant nurse role, the use of formal competency frameworks, current clinical scope of practice and perspectives on future preparation for the role. A semi-structured questionnaire was e-mailed to consultant nurses in emergency care. Respondents had an average of only 2 years in post and for 24% of respondents this was their second post as a consultant nurse. The survey identified that three quarters of the respondents had no specific preparation for the consultant nurse role. The remainder had varying levels of preparation ranging from brief induction to 6-month clinical training. It could be argued that this diversity of preparation is a reflection of the lack of clarity regarding the consultant nurse role and the ill-defined organisational frameworks within which some consultant nurse posts were established. With the exception of the expert practice domain and clinical leadership, the majority of respondents felt under prepared for one or more elements of the consultant nurse role. Clinically their scope of practice ranged from managing patients with minor illness or injury, to leading resuscitation teams. There was great inequity in the level of preparation for the role, particularly in the transformational leadership, education and training, and practice and service development domains. Strategies for addressing these deficiencies are identified.

Desigualdades sociais em saúde e na utilização dos serviços de saúde entre os idosos na América Latina

To learn if there is social inequality in health and in the utilization of health services among the elderly in six cities of Latin America: Buenos Aires, Argentina; São Paulo, Brazil; Santiago, Chile; Havana, Cuba; Mexico City, Mexico; and Montevideo, Uruguay. This study used data from a project called Health, Well-being, and Aging in Latin America and the Caribbean (known as the "SABE project"). To investigate the presence of social inequality in health an ordinal probit model was used, with health status indicated by the following dependent variables: activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living, physical mobility, and self-rated health. To measure social inequality in the utilization of health services two characteristics were assessed: one for outpatient medical services (whether or not individuals received outpatient care, and how many times), and one for hospital admissions (whether or not individuals were hospitalized). For outpatient services, we estimated a negative binomial hurdle model, and for hospital admissions, a logit model was constructed. Our main results suggest the presence of social inequality in health in all the cities, with better-off socioeconomic groups having better health. The difference in health was less marked in Havana, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo, and it was more pronounced in São Paulo and Mexico City. With respect to the utilization of health services we found inequalities in the use of outpatient services in Santiago, Mexico City, and São Paulo. In Santiago and Mexico City, more schooling was associated with a higher number of expected outpatient medical visits; however, the opposite was found in São Paulo. For hospital admissions, inequality was found only in São Paulo, with individuals with more years of schooling being much more likely to be hospitalized. To a certain extent, our results reflect the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the countries in which each of the six cities is located. The cities in the countries with the worst social indicators (high income inequality and low human development index) tended to have the greatest inequalities in health and in the utilization of health services.

Crucial needs, weak incentives: social sector reform, democratization, and globalization in Latin America

Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives studies the politics of efforts to reform education and health services in Latin America in the 1990s. Both sectors were common targets of reform-education because of its economic importance, health care because of needs to reduce great inequities of access and opportunities to increase domestic savings presented by reforms. Both sectors also have large numbers of unionized public employees, whose presence affects patronage as well as political power. The book presents case studies that offer a wealth of new information not previously accessible to the English-speaking academic and policy community. For health care, these cover Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Peru; for eductaion, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Four chapters by the editors set out for each sector the goals, structure, and outcomes of reform efforts. Contributors are Marta Arretche, Josefina Bruni Celli, Mary A. Clark, Javier Corrales, Sonia M. Draibe, Christina Ewig, Alec Ian Gershberg, Alejandra Gonzalez Rossetti, Merilee S. Grindle, Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, Pamela S. Lowden, and Patricia Ramirez.

Work Contracts and Earnings Inequality: The Case of Chile

Great social inequality has been one of the worrisome features of economic development in Latin America. This study focuses on Chile, one of Latin America's fastest growing economies with one of the highest levels of income inequality during the 1990s. Using micro-level data from the 1994 and 2000 Encuestas de Caracterización Socio-Económica, this article examines the role of work contracts in explaining male and female earnings and earnings inequality among wage and salary workers over the second half of the 1990s. The analysis distinguishes between wage and salary work without a work contract – referred to as ‘informal’ work, and wage and salary work with a work contract. Within the latter group, the study further differentiates by the type of work contract held, such as permanent and a variety of contingent work contracts. The findings reveal that the majority of employees in informal and contingent wage and salary work arrangements earned significantly less than their permanent counterparts. Additionally, informal and contingent wage and salary work arrangements accounted for a small, although increasing, fraction of male and female earnings inequality from 1994 to 2000. Finally, the proliferation of seasonal, fixed-term, and informal wage and salary work arrangements has been one of the few economically significant factors in explaining changes in male and female earnings inequality over the second half of the 1990s.

High School Exit Examinations and High School Dropout in Texas and Florida, 1971–2000

In this article, the authors ask whether state high school exit examinations are associated with high school dropout rates and racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in high school dropout rates in Florida and Texas. Using data from the 1968–2000 October Current Population Surveys, they first consider the 1971–2000 graduating classes and use a measure of whether students left school without obtaining any high school credential as the outcome variable. They next consider the 1991–2000 graduating classes and use a measure that classifies students who obtained general equivalency diplomas as dropouts as the outcome variable. In neither case did the authors find evidence that state high school exit examinations are independently associated with higher dropout rates or greater inequalities in dropout rates.

Socioeconomic factors and low birth weight in Mexico

BackgroundLow birth weight (LBW) is a public health problem linked to lack of equity in populations. Despite efforts to decrease the proportion of newborns with LBW, success has been quite limited. In recent years, studies focused on explaining how social factors influence this problem have shown that populations with greater inequities have a greater proportion of newborns with LBW.MethodsThe objective was to describe socioeconomic factors related to LBW adjusted by demographic, reproductive and health services variables in Mexico City. A case-control study was carried out in three hospitals with gynaecological and obstetrics services in Mexico City during the first half of 1996. During the recruiting period all children with LBW (cases), defined as newborns weighing <2500 grams, were matched with children born on the same day to control for time of birth. Upon arrival at the hospital for delivery, women were interviewed to determine if they met our inclusion criteria. Women with a history of chronic conditions and those with twin or multiple pregnancies were excluded. Variables with clinical and statistical significance were included in a multivariate model (logistic regression).ResultsWe found that low socioeconomic level was the most important risk factor for LBW and was independent of other factors, including those related to reproduction and nutrition, smoking, morbidity during pregnancy, accessibility to health services and prenatal care (OR 2.68; 95% CI 1.19, 6.03).ConclusionWe found that socioeconomic factors are relevant to LBW. However further research should be done in different population groups as well as developing precise ways of measuring socioeconomic factors and their role in reproductive health.

Ethical regulation of the Internet: the challenges of global governance

Multiregulation, a central support system for the ethical regulation of the Internet, provides a solution which is both complex and difficult to realize. It gives another vision of the methods of law production, as the characteristics of the internet imply an almost instantaneous and largely harmonized law. It also gives another vision of the application of the law since priority will be given to the means of making the players responsible in the context of promoting self-regulation tools. Accordingly, the harmonization of international law must make the progressive creation of a global public order system possible, to which all states will be likely to commit themselves. This harmonization aims at a progressive reconciliation of the rules, particularly those applicable within cyberspace. Agreement on a common denominator of rules can only come about through an ethical consensus-seeking process. Regulation and ethics must join forces to give the digital universe a framework of rules responding to a double imperative: to protect the rights and liberties of individuals and ensure the security of goods, without creating new abuses which themselves are destructive of freedom and dangerous for the security of people. Instituting an International Internet Committee or an equivalent body at the global level can be the means of achieving such a reform and important changes in present-day geopolitical and legal structures. Defining rules of such a planetary nature means asking ourselves questions about the shape of an international society and the form such a global governance could take. Clearly, the question implies major upheavals as the present balances are fragile, being based on excessively great inequalities. The coming of the information society could, in fact, cause these inequalities to increase even further. For the network of networks is a luxury which only a privileged minority of the population of the world can afford. This last point will certainly be one of the upcoming major issues of information technologies. The democratization of the Internet, by means of generalized facilitated access, could no doubt provide an element of reconciliation for the societies of the globe, many of which do not even know of the existence of these networks. The Internet therefore cannot continued to be thought of today as a simple means of communication to be added to the others. Using and regulating the Internet to include rather than just exclude a little more would also make it possible for cultural, philosophical and religious traditions to understand each other while continuing to be different, and to participate in the construction of a more equitable global society.

Preparing for the cancer revolution

The age of the world’s population is rising dramatically. This will lead to a significant increase in the total burden of cancer with many patients living with considerable comorbidity. At the same time, new technology in many therapeutic areas is bringing improvements to the quality and length of life. Major advances in the following six endeavours are likely to have the greatest impact on cancer:

Income inequality and weight status in US metropolitan areas

Prior empirical studies have demonstrated an association between income inequality and general health endpoints such as mortality and self-rated health, and findings have been taken as support for the hypothesis that inequality is detrimental to individual health. Unhealthy weight statuses may function as an intermediary link between inequality and more general heath endpoints. Using individual-level data from the 1996–98 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we examine the relationship between individual weight status and income inequality in US metropolitan areas. Income inequality is calculated with data from the 1990 US Census 5% Public Use Microsample. In analyses stratified by race–sex groups, we do not find a positive association between income inequality and weight outcomes such as body mass index, the odds of being overweight, and the odds of being obese. Among white women, however, we do find a statistically significant inverse association between inequality and each of these weight outcomes, despite adjustments for individual-level covariates, metropolitan-level covariates, and census region. We also find that greater inequality is associated with higher odds for trying to lose weight among white women, even adjusting for current weight status. Although our findings are suggestive of a contextual effect of metropolitan area income inequality, we do not find an increased risk for unhealthy weight outcomes, adding to recent debates surrounding this topic.

Why is Violence More Common Where Inequality is Greater?

The most well-established environmental determinant of levels of violence is the scale of income differences between rich and poor. More unequal societies tend to be more violent. If this is a relation between institutional violence and personal violence, how does it work and why is most of the violence a matter of the poor attacking the poor rather than the rich? This paper begins by showing that the tendency for rates of violent crime and homicide to be higher where there is more inequality is part of a more general tendency for the quality of social relations to be poorer in more hierarchical societies. Research on the social determinants of health is used to explore these relationships. It is a powerful source of insights because health is also harmed by greater inequality. Because epidemiological research has gone some way towards identifying the nature of our sensitivity to the social environment and to social status differentials in particular, it provides important insights into why violence is related to inequality. The picture that emerges substantiates and explains the common intuition that inequality is socially corrosive. With an evolutionary slant, and informed by work on ranking systems in non-human primates, this paper focuses on the sharp distinction between competitive social strategies appropriate to dominance hierarchies and the more affiliative social strategies associated with more egalitarian social structures. The implications for policy seem to echo the importance to the quality of life of the three inter-related dimensions of the social environment expressed in the demand for "liberty, equality, fraternity."

Dilemmas and advances in corporate social responsibility in Brazil. The work of the Ethos Institute

Abstract This article discusses the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Brazil from the perspective of the Ethos Institute of Business and Social Responsibility. The Institute is a not‐for‐profit, non‐governmental organization, that has played a leading role in the Brazilian CSR effort. In Brazil, CSR initiatives have a long tradition of philanthropy, a consequence of the country's great social inequalities. The increased attention to corporate social responsibility has paralleled growing concern about sustainable development and the intensifying activities of pressure groups (consumers, customers, investors, NGOs, labour unions, the media, among others) that have been increasing since the 1990s as natural resources are progressively becoming exhausted, social tensions rising and environmental conditions deteriorating worldwide. This article identifies problems and obstacles to the growth of corporate social responsibility in Brazil, as well as advances and alternatives for CSR and towards creating conditions for the country to be internationally competitive and sustainable in the financial, social and environmental areas.

The association of inequality with the incidence of schizophrenia--an ecological study.

Socio-economic factors are known to be associated with schizophrenia, but no studies have investigated the effect of inequality on incidence rates of schizophrenia. The aim of the study was to determine whether those electoral wards with greater inequality have a higher incidence of schizophrenia. An ecological study was carried out involving a retrospective case record study to calculate the incidence of schizophrenia across wards in Camberwell, South London for the period 1988-1997, and an index of inequality within each ward was calculated. There was no significant effect of inequality overall. However, in the group of deprived wards, the incidence of RDC schizophrenia increased as inequality increased (IRR 3.79, 95 %CI 1.25.11.49 p = 0.019 after adjusting for age, sex, absolute deprivation, ethnicity, proportion of ethnic minorities and the interaction between individual ethnicity and proportion of ethnic minorities. Increased inequality is associated with increasing incidence of schizophrenia, but only in the most deprived areas. This is independent of other known social risk factors.

Regional Income Inequality and International Trade

This study investigates the effects of trade on income inequality across regions in the United States. Using both structural and price-based measures of regional trade involvement, we evaluate the effects of trade on inequality within and across states, the metropolitan and nonmetropolitan portions of the states, and the major census regions. Across all states and metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, we found that trade affects inequality primarily via import and export prices. In contrast to our expectations, however, a weaker dollar—more expensive imports and cheaper exports—is associated with the worsening of a state’s position relative to other states and greater inequality within the state. Across the census regions, both our price and orientation measures had significant effects, but the direction of these effects varied by region. Whereas many regions benefited from cheaper imports, states in regions that are traditionally home to low-wage sectors, including the Southeast and South Central regions, were made relatively worse off by lower import prices and by greater orientation toward import-competing goods. Our findings reinforce notions about the uneven impacts of globalization and suggest that policy measures are needed to ensure that both the benefits and costs of involvement in international trade are shared across regions.

Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule

Many developing countries have suffered under the personal rule of kleptocrats, who implement highly inefe cient economic policies, expropriate the wealth of their citizens, and use the proceeds for their own glorie cation or consumption. We argue that the success of kleptocrats rests, in part, on their ability to use a divide-and-rule strategy, made possible by the weakness of institutions in these societies. Members of society need to cooperate in order to depose a kleptocrat, yet such cooperation may be defused by imposing punitive rates of taxation on any citizen who proposes such a move, and redistributing the benee ts to those who need to agree to it. Thus the collective action problem can be intensie ed by threats which remain off the equilibrium path. In equilibrium, all are exploited and no one challenges the kleptocrat. Kleptocratic policies are more likely when foreign aid and rents from natural resources provide rulers with substantial resources to buy off opponents; when opposition groups are shortsighted; when the average productivity in the economy is low; and when there is greater inequality between producer groups (because more productive groups are more dife cult to buy off). (JEL: O12, H00)

Chaos and the Effects of Planetary Migration on the Orbit of S/2000 S5 Kiviuq

Among the many new irregular satellites that have been discovered in the last 5 years, five or more are in the so-called Kozai resonance. Because of solar perturbations, the argument of pericenter ! of a satellite usually precesses from 0 � to 360 � . However, at inclinations higher than ’39N3 and lower than ’140N7, a new kind of behavior occurs for which the argument of pericenter oscillates around � 90 � . In this work we concentrate on the orbital history of the Saturnian satellite S/2000 S5 Kiviuq, one of the satellites currently known to be in such resonance. Kiviuq’s orbit is very close to the separatrix of the Kozai resonance. Because of perturbations from the other Jovian planets, it is expected that orbits near the Kozai separatrix may show significant chaotic behavior. This is important because chaotic diffusion may transfer orbits from libration to circulation, and vice versa. To identify chaotic orbits, we used two well-known methods: the frequency analysis method of Laskar and the maximum Lyapunov exponents method of Benettin and coworkers. Our results show that the Kozai resonance is crossed by a web of secondary resonances, whose arguments involve combinations of the argument of pericenter, the argument of the Great Inequality (GI) (2kJ � 5kS), the longitude of the node � , and other terms related to the secular frequencies g5, g6 ,a nds6. Many test orbits whose precession period are close to the period of the GI (883 yr), or some of its harmonics, are trapped by these secondary resonances and show significant chaotic behavior. Because the GI’s period is connected to the semimajor axes of Jupiter and Saturn and because the positions of the Jovian planets have likely changed since their formation, the phase-space location of these secondary resonances should have been different in the past. By simulating the effect of planetary migration, we show that a mechanism of sweeping secondary resonances, similar to the one studied by Ferraz-Mello and coworkers. for the asteroids in the 2:1 mean motion resonance with Jupiter, could significantly deplete a primordial population of Kozai resonators and push several circulators near the Kozai separatrix. This mechanism is not limited to Kiviuq’s region and could have worked to destabilize any initial population of satellites in the Kozai resonance around Saturn and Jupiter.

Greater Inequality, Greater Instability

Robert Pollin, Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity (London, New York: Verso, 2003), 229 pages, $21.00 cloth.Robert Pollin's Contours of Descent deserves wide reading. This is a book sophisticated enough to be of interest to those with economics training, but written in a comprehensible and popular style, so that without sacrificing rigor it will be accessible to any interested citizen. It provides a broad review of the economic policies of Clinton and Bush and the IMF-World Bank regimen for third world countries, and it is packed with interesting details, citations to recent economic studies, and political as well as economic reflections on the passing scene.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.