High Levels Of Inequality Research Articles

ACCESS: An agent-based model to explore job accessibility inequalities

This paper presents ACCESS, an agent-based model for exploring job accessibility inequalities among different social groups. ACCESS allows for investigation on the impact of public transport and land use policies on the residential location of the working population and their accessibility to job opportunities. ACCESS can be adapted to different realities, allowing to represent societies with diverse socioeconomic disparities. A utility function composed of job accessibility and neighborhood status is maximized by agents during the residential location choice process. The model outputs include Lorenz curves considering the accessibility dimension, as well as Gini metrics to support the analysis of interventions impacts on accessibility inequalities. An empirical case study is performed on the municipality of Sao Paulo, which is characterized by high levels of inequality. Five experiments were simulated considering three different socio-occupational groups. The first experiment includes (i) new public mass rail transport lines, and the other four experiments consider the new transport infrastructure from the first experiment and add (ii) new social housing location strategies; (iii) new job locations; (iv) new jobs and different social housing supplies and location strategies; and (v) provision of social housing based on a government housing program. The results show that ACCESS allowed the residential location of different social status groups to be depicted with a high correlation to the observed situation. Regarding the case study, the results indicate that only having interventions on transport system is insufficient to provide a significant change in terms of inequality. Better results that impact inequality are reached with public mass rail transport interventions associated with land use policies with different social housing and job location programs.

Gender Socioeconomic Inequalities in Intimate Relationships

Inspired by the materialist feminist theoretical approach, this study starts from an underlying assumption that research of gender socioeconomic inequalities in intimate relationships requires the analysis of specific variables that constitute the socioeconomic status of intimate partners. Based on five indicators relevant for contemporary Croatian society, the GSEI index was constructed and applied to a representative sample of Croatian women in intimate relationships. The results showed significant gender socioeconomic inequalities between intimate partners, mostly in favour of men. The highest level of inequality between intimate partners was discovered with regard to real-estate ownership, whereas the highest level of equality between partners was found in their level of education. Although socioeconomic inequalities between intimate partners in favour of men prevail regardless of the geographic and social context, they are more pronounced in regions with more traditional values, among couples who live in rural areas, and among those who are married (in comparison with those who live in domestic partnership). A recommendation for further research and GSEI index application is to consider which are the relevant indicators for measuring gender socioeconomic inequalities in intimate relationships depending on the wider social context.

Rural Livelihood Transformations and Land Inequality in Bangka

Since the Dutch colonial era, Bangka Belitung Province has been a rich province due to its abundanttin mining resources. However, the limitation of tin availability and the extraordinary environmental degradation caused by mining has changed people’s lives. This study aims to determine the level of land ownership inequality and the factors that influence such inequality. In addition, this study also describes the transformation causes of the livelihoods of the majority of the population in Bangka. This research was conducted through descriptive quantitative analysis, and the data was obtained through a survey of 140 head of households whowork as farmers or work as a farm labourers in Bangka and West Bangka. Analysisof land ownership inequality is done through the Gini index ratio measured using the Lorenz curve. The results of a study conducted on 140 respondents in Bangka and Bangka Barat show that the level of land ownership inequality reaches 0.45. Several things have an effect on the level of inequality. First, most of Bangka regions, almost 3/4 the areas have mining permits. Second, there has been a large-scale expansion of oil palm plantations and a lot of Cultivation Rights Permits/HGU. Third, most of the areas outside the mining and the cultivation rights permits are forest areas. The results of the study also show that the majority of the community shifted from miners to farmers due to limited tin sources and low tin prices. The high level of inequality in land ownership and the shifting of community’s main jobs can certainly affect the economic growth which is getting weaker and widening the inequality.

Naturalizing Inequality: The Problem of Economic Fatalism in the Age of Piketty

Using the unprecedented 2014 Science special issue on inequality as a conceptual guide, this article examines the recent return of an assortment of fatalist arguments which claim that high levels of economic inequality are a natural, inevitable, and basic characteristic of human civilization and that, therefore, it would be incredibly difficult and damaging—if not impossible—to significantly reduce such income and wealth gaps. Classifying these varying arguments into four natural “laws” of inequality—mathematical, neoclassical, historical, and genetic—this article seeks to unpack the internal logic and external politics of such claims by placing them in their broader historical context. In so doing, this article will also show how certain aspects of Thomas Piketty’s earlier work played a key—albeit unintended—role in the recent renaissance in naturalizing inequality. In conclusion, this article reflects on other aspects of Piketty’s analysis that can be used to “denaturalize” inequality and reveal its highly contingent, political, structural, and institutional basis. Finally, the article will end with a call for historians of capitalism to pick up the denaturalizing mantle and seek to explicitly disprove and challenge the contention that high levels of inequality are all but inevitable.

‘Just because you don't see your boss, doesn't mean you don't have a boss’: Covid-19 and Gig Worker Strikes across Latin America

20 | International Union Rights | 27/3 FOCUS | IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON WORK AND THE CHALLENGE FOR UNION RIGHTS ‘Justbecauseyoudon’tseeyourboss, doesn’tmeanyoudon’thaveaboss’:Covid19 and Gig Worker Strikes across Latin America Latin America has been hit hard by Covid-19. On 22 September, the region had reported more than 8.8 million cases, and 325,000 deaths (Horton, 2020). As daily case numbers began to fall in Europe from May onwards, they continued to surge in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and across the region. So far, Brazil has recorded the third highest number of cases in the world, 4.5 million as at September, and more than 140,000 people have lost their lives. Looking beyond the headline numbers, it is clear that the region’s high levels of inequality have shaped the course and the outcomes of its pandemic experience. Latin America includes some of the most unequal countries in the world, and these existing inequalities inevitably put the greatest pressure on those on the margins of the labour market. ‘Gig’ (or ‘platform’) workers, who perform piece-rate on-demand tasks through apps, have been particularly hard hit. Many gig workers lost their incomes overnight as a result of lockdowns, while others risk heightened exposure to the virus in order to keep earning. While the images of mass grave sites dominated news emanating from Latin America in May, weeks later another story of global significance was emerging - large, coordinated strikes by gig economy workers across the region. As early as April, workers had begun striking against dangerous working conditions and low pay during the pandemic. Protests intensified in July, with large-scale strikes on July 1 spanning ten Brazilian cities, alongside other countries, including Argentina, Ecuador, Chile and Mexico. Further international strikes occurred in August. The strikers were food delivery couriers, working for Uber Eats, Rappi, iFood, Glovo and other platforms. These strikes are particularly historic, in that they represent the first real example of an international, sector-wide, strike movement in the gig economy. They have been catalysed by the conditions of the pandemic for a number of reasons. Covid-19 has further eroded gig workers’ already tenuous financial and physical security, whilst also demonstrating the essential nature of the work they perform. These conditions highlight the core issue of the misclassification of platform workers as independent contractors without access to employment rights or benefits. As the struggle faced by gig workers in Latin America has only intensified, the pandemic has provided the impetus and platform for thousands to raise their voices against underlying structural injustices. In this article, we trace the courier strikes across Latin America, with evidence from Brazil, Chile and Ecuador from April to August. These case studies have been compiled by researchers in the Fairwork network, a multi-national collaborative research project that tracks labour conditions in the gig economy, and encourages labour platforms to meet defined standards of fair work in the absence of regulation (Graham et. al., 2020). Covid-19 and Worker Strikes Across Latin America Histories of profound social inequality mean precarious working conditions are already normalised in many Latin American countries, however so are legacies of labour resistance. In Brazil, many have worked in insecure jobs, as couriers, cleaners and drivers, for a long time before the advent of digital labour platforms. Nevertheless recent years have witnessed the further erosion of public provision of social security, education, health, and labour rights, paving the way for the gig economy model of algorithmically-managed insecure work to become widespread. As President Jair Bolsonaro pronounced early in his term; ‘workers will have to choose between more rights or more jobs’ (in Araujo & Murakawa, 2020). Covid-19 has further heightened the precarity faced by gig workers (Fairwork, 2020). In the gig economy, workers disproportionately bear both the risks, and the costs associated with the labour process (Fredman et. al., 2020). For delivery drivers, the risk of contracting the virus is now added to the everpresent risk of road accidents. Additionally, restaurant closures have increased the risk of non-payment, and deactivation. At the centre of this issue is the practice of classifying workers as independent contractors. Because gig workers are not classified as...

Влияние НДС на неравенство доходов в некоторых странах АСЕАН

The aim of the article is to find data on the impact of value added tax (VAT) on income inequality in some ASEAN countries. The author con-cludes that VAT has different effects: it increases inequality in countries with low income inequality, and in countries with high levels of inequality it reduces income inequality.

‘Just because you don't see your boss, doesn't mean you don't have a boss’: Covid-19 and Gig Worker Strikes across Latin America

20 | International Union Rights | 27/3 FOCUS | IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON WORK AND THE CHALLENGE FOR UNION RIGHTS ‘Justbecauseyoudon’tseeyourboss, doesn’tmeanyoudon’thaveaboss’:Covid19 and Gig Worker Strikes across Latin America Latin America has been hit hard by Covid-19. On 22 September, the region had reported more than 8.8 million cases, and 325,000 deaths (Horton, 2020). As daily case numbers began to fall in Europe from May onwards, they continued to surge in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and across the region. So far, Brazil has recorded the third highest number of cases in the world, 4.5 million as at September, and more than 140,000 people have lost their lives. Looking beyond the headline numbers, it is clear that the region’s high levels of inequality have shaped the course and the outcomes of its pandemic experience. Latin America includes some of the most unequal countries in the world, and these existing inequalities inevitably put the greatest pressure on those on the margins of the labour market. ‘Gig’ (or ‘platform’) workers, who perform piece-rate on-demand tasks through apps, have been particularly hard hit. Many gig workers lost their incomes overnight as a result of lockdowns, while others risk heightened exposure to the virus in order to keep earning. While the images of mass grave sites dominated news emanating from Latin America in May, weeks later another story of global significance was emerging - large, coordinated strikes by gig economy workers across the region. As early as April, workers had begun striking against dangerous working conditions and low pay during the pandemic. Protests intensified in July, with large-scale strikes on July 1 spanning ten Brazilian cities, alongside other countries, including Argentina, Ecuador, Chile and Mexico. Further international strikes occurred in August. The strikers were food delivery couriers, working for Uber Eats, Rappi, iFood, Glovo and other platforms. These strikes are particularly historic, in that they represent the first real example of an international, sector-wide, strike movement in the gig economy. They have been catalysed by the conditions of the pandemic for a number of reasons. Covid-19 has further eroded gig workers’ already tenuous financial and physical security, whilst also demonstrating the essential nature of the work they perform. These conditions highlight the core issue of the misclassification of platform workers as independent contractors without access to employment rights or benefits. As the struggle faced by gig workers in Latin America has only intensified, the pandemic has provided the impetus and platform for thousands to raise their voices against underlying structural injustices. In this article, we trace the courier strikes across Latin America, with evidence from Brazil, Chile and Ecuador from April to August. These case studies have been compiled by researchers in the Fairwork network, a multi-national collaborative research project that tracks labour conditions in the gig economy, and encourages labour platforms to meet defined standards of fair work in the absence of regulation (Graham et. al., 2020). Covid-19 and Worker Strikes Across Latin America Histories of profound social inequality mean precarious working conditions are already normalised in many Latin American countries, however so are legacies of labour resistance. In Brazil, many have worked in insecure jobs, as couriers, cleaners and drivers, for a long time before the advent of digital labour platforms. Nevertheless recent years have witnessed the further erosion of public provision of social security, education, health, and labour rights, paving the way for the gig economy model of algorithmically-managed insecure work to become widespread. As President Jair Bolsonaro pronounced early in his term; ‘workers will have to choose between more rights or more jobs’ (in Araujo & Murakawa, 2020). Covid-19 has further heightened the precarity faced by gig workers (Fairwork, 2020). In the gig economy, workers disproportionately bear both the risks, and the costs associated with the labour process (Fredman et. al., 2020). For delivery drivers, the risk of contracting the virus is now added to the everpresent risk of road accidents. Additionally, restaurant closures have increased the risk of non-payment, and deactivation. At the centre of this issue is the practice of classifying workers as independent contractors. Because gig workers are not classified as...

Trickle-up Economics. Trump, Growth, and Inequality

During the first three years of the Trump administration, the U.S. economy grew steadily, and the unemployment rate fell to levels unseen since 1969. Donald Trump was swift in crediting the boon to his deregulatory policies, tax cuts, industrial protectionism and trade wars. It should be noted, however, that the economic results of the Trump administration continued in the footsteps of the Obama administration. The continuity between the Obama and Trump administrations is also visible in the very high levels of inequality. While it’s true that inequality in the age of Trump is not a new phenomenon, the Trump administration took initiatives that have worsened an already dire situation. In particular, the introduction of the Tax Cuts and Job Act in November 2017 and the several attempts at repealing and hindering the functioning of Obamacare, contributed to increasingly skewed income, health, and racial inequality. The Covid pandemic and the massive sanitary and economic emergency that swept the United States functioned as a stress test for specific policies implemented by the Trump administration. In particular, the pandemic works as a magnifier of many inequalities, especially the racial divide that still haunts the United States.

Социальное неравенство в России

The article shows that the economic characteristics of inequality are part of a broader phenomenon - social inequality. The main areas of its manifestation are considered: by monetary income and wealth; current consumption of goods; access to housing and social infrastructure; as well as - in the spatial aspect; the standard of living and quality of life of urban and rural populations; sectoral aspect; age demographic groups; the use of digital technologies. Inequality was assessed and its high dimensions were reasoned, which is reflected in Russia's position in the group of countries with the highest level of inequality in income and wealth; in a tenfold gap in average consumer spending among ten percent of the most and least income groups of households; in more than tenfold differentiation in the number of citizens with housing poverty and high housing security; in the inaccessibility for half of College and University students to study at the expense of budget allocations; the gap in life expectancy at birth in the regions of the Russian Federation with the highest and lowest values of the indicator is 16 years. There is three to five times higher unemployment among young people compared to other groups of the economically active population, etc. The question is raised about the need to develop a national program to increase the real monetary income of the population, reduce poverty and inequality.

Are People Willing to Pay for Reduced Inequality?

In the face of rising income inequality (Acemoglu & Autor, 2011; Atkinson, Piketty, & Saez, 2011; Piketty, 2014; World Economic Forum, 2014), one recent proposal is to provide consumers with information about the income inequality across those involved in the production of each good, at the point of purchase. This has been shown to depress overall inequality (Hill, 2020), though its impact depends crucially on whether people are willing to pay more for goods whose production involves less income inequality. Here we investigate this largely unexplored empirical question through an incentivised, behavioural choice experiment on a representative sample of the English population. We find that a large majority are willing to pay significantly more for goods associated with less inequality. How much more people are willing to pay varies with political leaning and increases with the extent of the inequality reduction, but is positive across the political spectrum and for all studied inequality differences. Moreover, it is typically higher when inequality is reported in more intuitive and informa- tive formats. Our results bode well for the effectiveness of product-level inequality information provision as a tool for moderating income inequality, promising impacts even in markets where all goods involve relatively high inequality levels and potential participation across the political spectrum.

Gender inequality and gender-based poverty in Mexico

The objective of a country's government is to increase the well-being of its population. For this reason, a precise measure of inequality and poverty contributes to better development of economic and public policies to reduce the former and latter, respectively. Therefore, in recent years, various indexes have been developed to measure and compare inequality and poverty. In the case of Mexico, the Gini and Theil indexes are used to measure both problems. However, they are criticized for the overvaluation that they generate on specific population segments. For a better measurement, this paper calculates and investigates the relationship between the Palma index (inequality) and the Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke index (poverty). In addition to reducing the overvaluation problem, the indexes mentioned allow us to perform an analysis by gender and employment type (salaried and self-employed). The main results do not diverge from those already found through traditional measures. In general, a high level of inequality exists. However, our paper contributes to the literature by identifying both problems by gender. Men present greater inequality than women, whereas women present greater poverty than men. Finally, a positive, albeit weak, correlation exists between both problems, which means that poverty can be combated by combating inequality.

Territorial disparities between mountains and lowlands in Greece in the context of post-2020 Cohesion Policy

While mountain regions face territorial disparities when set against lowlands, the EU’s post-2020 Cohesion Policy seeks to reduce such between regions by focusing on those that are most vulnerable. Along with regions that are otherwise remote, mountainous areas are mostly seen as in decline, and deprived of opportunities to achieve sustainable development. They face serious demographic issues connected closely with migration outflows, while they are characterised by low-quality educational services and a paucity of employment opportunities compared with circumstances in the lowlands. It against this background that the work detailed here was carried out to investigate inequalities between mountain and lowland areas of Greece. Specifically, the focus is on disparities in levels of education and unemployment, as well as population shifts. While the temporal frame comprises the period 2001-2011, the locality is the mountainous Municipal Unit of Ioannina, in the Region of Epirus. The findings reveal high level of inequality in all sectors of vital importance to one of the EU’s poorest regions, while the further aim of the paper id to reveal the main drivers underpinning disparities in the context of post-2020 policy.

Patterns and Drivers of Household Income Dynamics in Russia: The Role of Access to Credit

The microeconomic drivers of medium- and short-term income mobility in Russia over the period 1996–2016 are investigated using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS). Focusing on the role of access to credit in triggering household income growth, the descriptive analysis suggests that high levels of mobility materialising in pro-poor patterns of growth may accompany Russia’s notoriously high levels of inequality. Controlling for other personal and household characteristics, the econometric model for drivers of income mobility indicates that access to credit boosts income mobility. Complementary empirical evidence suggests that this effect may unfold through channels related to the labour market and non-labour sources of income.

A Message from the Editor: The Global North-South Framework Fails to Explain COVID-19, but Why?

A Message from the Editor:The Global North-South Framework Fails to Explain COVID-19, but Why? Ryan M. Alexander Back in March of this year, when the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic had just begun to set in, I participated in a roundtable discussion at my campus's Institute for Ethics in Public Life. My job was to offer historical perspective by discussing the 1918 influenza pandemic. At the forum, I asked a question of a Chinese colleague, who had voluntarily undergone self-quarantine following her recent return to the United States from her home country. She had spent much of her talk discussing measures than she had recently witnessed being taken in China, including community-level efforts at voluntary self-quarantining and wearing masks. She made it clear that such efforts in China had occurred earlier, and with far more uniformity and vigor, than they had in the United States. I asked her whether this might have had anything to do with the more centralized and authoritarian regime governing China. Her response, to my surprise, was a resounding no. Rather, she contended, Chinese citizens were simply far more receptive to recommended public health measures that might offer positive outcomes for the population at large. She further extrapolated that since US citizens, even reasonably skeptical and worldly ones, primarily hear negative things about Chinese government and society, it stood to reason that I might assume that individual behaviors would reflect government imposition. I walked away unconvinced. But since then, I have struggled to pinpoint exactly which factors have determined why certain countries have suffered extreme hardship during the pandemic, while others have not. The analytical framework of Global North–South studies would typically explain a phenomenon like the coronavirus pandemic, if not explicitly then at least implicitly, as a function of the dynamics of the system that created the Global [End Page xi] North-South divide to begin with. Thus, the logic would follow that countries on the losing side of that divide—that is, those in the Global South—would suffer most, due to the familiar litany of problems plaguing them: unresponsive and corrupt governments, insufficient medical resources, economies suffering high levels of inequality and poverty, and so forth. Yet the pattern has been far more erratic. At the beginning of June, five highly developed countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain—which together constitute about 7.5 percent of the world's population, had approximately two-thirds of the world's coronavirus deaths. Then, in a matter of weeks, cases in Latin America surged. This has been especially true of Brazil, which has become the world's second-most-afflicted nation. The country's president, Jair Bolsonaro, spent much of the first half of 2020 dismissing and mocking the seriousness of the coronavirus, only to be diagnosed with it in early July. Meanwhile, Mexico, led by the leftist populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose public statements on coronavirus contain roughly equal measures of dismissal and superstition, has also seen an explosion of cases. Beyond the Americas, various other countries—among them India, Iran, Sweden, and Russia—have seen recent spikes. What can explain these patterns (or, rather, the apparent lack of them)? Professors Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, both professors at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, argue in their book, How Democracies Die, that countries with "illiberal populist leaders," particularly those with right-wing tendencies, have tended to suffer most.1 The explanation holds up to a point. It certainly works to explain the United States under Donald Trump or Brazil under Bolsonaro, but it fails to account for the alarming number of cases in the liberal democracies of France, Italy, or Spain (I am regarding the Brexitera United Kingdom under Prime Minister Boris Johnson as falling somewhere in-between). If we accept that the globally connected, densely populated, and highly urbanized democracies of western Europe are inherently more susceptible, how would we explain the comparatively low numbers coming from Germany—Europe's geographic and economic center—which exhibits all of those aforementioned features in spades? The "illiberal populism" thesis also falls short of explaining the lack of...

Educational Homogamy, Positive Assortative Mating and Income Inequality in South Africa: An Unconditional Quantile Regression Analysis

Apart from being the first attempt at investigating the impact of education-based homogamy and positive assortative mating on income inequality in a developing country context with very high levels of inequality and low education levels, this study pioneers in analysing the nonlinear relationship between mating patterns and income inequality. Further, the study contributes by the use of unconditional quantile regression and other distributional measures facilitated by the recentered influence function (RIF) method. The study finds convincing evidence of the existence of homogamy and positive assortative mating in South Africa. However, the strength of the relationship is seen to be weakening among younger cohorts as compared with older cohorts. The study further finds a non-linear U-shaped relationship between income inequality and the level of education-based homogamy, while a negative relationship is revealed between positive assortative mating and income inequality.

Income inequality and CO2 emissions in belt and road initiative countries: the role of democracy.

This paper investigates the interaction effects of income inequality and democracy on CO2 emissions. The spatial panel model, which accounts for the spatial spillover effects across countries, is used. Using the panel data covering 41 Belt and Road initiative countries, the results indicate significant positive spatial spillovers effect to country-level CO2 emission activity. The Kuznets Curve hypothesis, which assumes that reverse U relation presents between income and CO2 emissions, is identified. Empirical results provide evidence that democracy levels promote the nonlinear nexus between income inequality and CO2 emissions. High levels of inequality, ceteris paribus, in conjunction with poor democratic institutions are likely to result in higher pollution. The findings are robust to various robustness tests.

Sharing the Growth Dividend: Analysis of Inequality in Asia

This paper focusses on income inequality in Asia, its drivers and policies to combat it. It finds that income inequality has risen in most of Asia, in contrast to many regions. While in the past, rapid growth in Asia has come with equitable distribution of the gains, more recently fast-growing Asian economies have been unable to replicate the “growth with equity” miracle. There is a growing consensus that high levels of inequality can hamper the pace and sustainability of growth. The paper argues that policies could have a substantial effect on reversing the trend of rising inequality. It is imperative to address inequality of opportunities, in particular to broaden access to education, health, and financial services. Also fiscal policy could combat rising inequality, including by expanding and broadening the coverage of social spending, improving tax progressivity, and boosting compliance. Further efforts to promote financial inclusion, while maintaining financial stability, can help.

A comprehensive assessment of universal health coverage in 111 countries: a retrospective observational study

The goal of universal health coverage (UHC) requires that everyone receive needed health services, and that families who get needed services do not suffer undue financial hardship. Tracking progress towards UHC requires measurement of both these dimensions, and a way of trading them off against one another. We measured service coverage by a weighted geometric average of four prevention indicators (antenatal care, full immunisation, and screening for breast and cervical cancers) and four treatment indicators (skilled birth attendance, inpatient admission, and treatment for acute respiratory infection and diarrhoea), financial protection by the incidence of catastrophic health expenditures (those exceeding 10% of household consumption or income), and a country's UHC performance as a geometric average of the service coverage index and the complement of the incidence of catastrophic expenditures. Where possible, we adjusted service coverage for inequality, penalising countries with a high level of inequality. The bulk of data used in this study were from the World Bank's Health Equity and Financial Protection Indicators database (2019 version), comprising data from household surveys. Gaps in the data were supplemented with other survey data and (where necessary) non-survey data from other sources (administrative, modelled, and imputed data). A low incidence of catastrophic expenses sometimes reflects low service coverage (often in low-income countries) but sometimes occurs despite high service coverage (often in high-income countries). At a given level of service coverage, financial protection also varies. UHC index scores are generally higher in higher-income countries, but there are variations within income groups. Adjusting the UHC index for inequality in service coverage makes little difference in some countries, but reduces it by more than 10% in others. Seven of the 12 countries for which we were able to produce trend data have increased their UHC index over time (with the greatest average yearly increases seen in Ghana [1·43%], Indonesia [1·85%], and Vietnam [2·26%]), mostly by improving both financial protection and service coverage. Some increased their UHC index, despite reductions in financial protection, by substantially increasing their service coverage. The UHC index decreased in five of 12 countries with trend data, mostly because financial protection worsened with stagnant or declining service coverage. Our UHC indicators (except inpatient admissions) are significantly and positively associated with GDP per capita, and most are correlated with the share of health spending channelled through social health insurance and government schemes. However, associations of our UHC indicators with the share of GDP spent on health and the shares of health spending channelled through non-profit and private insurance are ambiguous. Progress towards UHC can be tracked using an index that captures both service coverage and financial protection. Although per-capita income is a good predictor of a country's UHC index score, some countries perform better than others in the same income group or even in the income group above their own. Strong UHC performance is correlated with the share of a country's health budget that is channelled through government and social health insurance schemes. None.

Material and Relational Difficulties: The Impact of the Household Environment on the Emotional Well-Being of Young Black Women Living in Soweto, South Africa

South Africa is an upper-middle income country with high levels of inequality. Young urban black women living in historically disadvantaged suburbs are particularly vulnerable to these socioeconomic inequalities. We conducted a qualitative study (four focus group discussions with young nulliparous women and 13 dual semistructured interviews between women and their mother) to better understand the household environment context of young women living in Soweto (a poor urban predominantly black township) and how this impacts their emotional well-being. Several household-centered issues were identified that impacted the young women’s well-being including both material and relational elements. These issues resulted in household environmental perturbations involving several psychological disturbances (stress, chronic anger, depression, and suicidal thoughts) stated by young women. Urban young black women experience significant material and relational hardships within the household environment. Interventions that aim to optimize young women’s emotional well-being should better recognize both economic and cultural aspects impacting on them.

The Quality of Institutions and the Relationship Between International Trade and Inequality

This paper investigates the relationship between international trade and inequality in Brazilian municipalities, distinguishing them by the quality of local institutions. It departs from the theoretical hypothesis of a reinforcing relationship between inequality and quality of institutions. The related literature shows that initial conditions of inequality shape the gradual evolution of institutions over time, while institutions also determine current inequality. I apply micro data from the 2000 and 2010 Brazilian censuses combined with data on international trade at the municipal level. Focusing on a unique political regime facilitates analysis of the direct influence of institutional quality on the international trade-inequality nexus. The empirical analysis regresses municipal Gini index on municipal exports and imports for two subsamples of the available data, representing municipalities with weak institutions and municipalities with strong institutions, according to two specific institutional variables. The first variable measures the distance to a labor court of a given municipality, and the second variable measures the municipal concentration of resources, represented by land Gini. I find that only municipal exports robustly reduce inequality and the magnitude of reduction is higher in municipalities with strong institutions than in those with weak institutions, which is in line with a redistributive aptitude associated with the quality of institutions. If exports increase 10%, Gini reduces by 0.00756 points in municipalities with low distance to justice, while the effect of exports on Gini is not significantly different from zero in municipalities with high distance to justice. An increase of 10% in exports reduces the Gini index in 0.00548 point in municipalities with high concentration of land, and reduces the Gini index in 0.00905 point in municipalities with low concentration of land. The empirical results show that exports reduce inequality to a greater extent in places with relatively strong institutions, predominantly located in the south, that already present a lower level of inequality than northern municipalities. Thus, exports exacerbate inequality between regions. For this reason, policy implications of exports-inequality nexus are quite limited regarding the reduction of inequality between regions. For this proposal, it would be desirable a factor that could reduce inequality in regions with higher levels of inequality.