Household Inequality Research Articles

Monetary Policy and Household Inequality

This paper considers how monetary policy produces heterogeneous effects on euro area households, depending on the composition of their income and on the components of their wealth. We first review the existing evidence on how monetary policy affects income and wealth inequality. We then illustrate quantitatively how various channels of transmission—net interest rate exposure, intertemporal substitution and indirect income channels—affect individual euro area households. We find that the indirect income channel has an overwhelming importance, especially for households holding few or no liquid assets. The indirect income channel is therefore also a substantial driver of changes in consumption at the aggregate level.

The Effects of Medical Expenditure on Income Inequality in Elderly and Non-Elderly Households by Income Class

The Effects of Medical Expenditure on Income Inequality in Elderly and Non-Elderly Households by Income Class

Income inequality of households in Poland: A subgroup decomposition of generalized entropy measures

A formula of measures applied to assess the level of income inequality results from the intellectual basis on which this approach is founded. Our paper focuses on Generalized Entropy measures. The aim of our paper is two-fold. Firstly, it aims at presenting GE measures and discussing their properties, especially the property of additive decomposition. Secondly, the empirical aim is to assess the level of income inequality in Poland and to indicate its main determinants. In the study we use microdata obtained from EU-SILC that cover information about incomes received by individual household members in 2016. Five factors are chosen as the possible drivers of income inequality. The study proves the characteristics related to human capital are the most influential factors of income variability between households. The characteristics describing the composition of the household contribute to the overall level of inequality to asmaller extent.

The effect of public pensions on women's labor market participation over a full life cycle

Spousal and survivor pensions are two important provisions of the US Social Security pension system. In this paper, we assess the impact of these benefits on the female employment rate in the context of a full life‐cycle model in which households decide on female labor supply and savings. One important aspect of our model is that we allow for returns to labor market experience so that participation decisions affect not only current earnings and Social Security pension eligibility but also future earnings. We quantify the effect on female labor supply and on household inequality of (i) removing spousal benefit, (ii) removing both spousal and survivor pension benefits, and (iii) extending from 35 to 40 the number of periods of the working career that are considered when calculating the retired worker's pension. We find that reforms (i) and (ii) significantly increase female employment throughout the life cycle, whereas reform (iii) has a very mild effect. The effect of (ii) on income inequality in older household is large, whereas the effect on consumption inequality is small. All three reforms have substantial effects on Social Security expenditure and fiscal revenues. Social Security Spousal and Survivor Benefits Women's Labor Market Participation D15 H55 J22 J24

“Our turn to eat:” Shifting gender norms and food security in the Wakiso district of Uganda

ABSTRACTEvidence suggests that household inequalities contribute to food insecurity and nutrient deficiencies in rural Ugandan women. In this mixed-methods study, 64 participants from two villages in the Wakiso District were interviewed and asked questions from FANTA’s Household Food Insecurity Access Scales (HFIAS) tool. Participants detailed foods consumed within the last 24 hr; these data were used to create Household Dietary Diversity (HDDS) scores. Discussion group qualitative data were evaluated through thematic analysis. There was no statistically significant evidence to suggest that the gender of the head of the household influenced these scores. The mean HFIAS score was 9.3 out of 27 and the mean HDDS was 6.4 out of 14. The qualitative data paints a picture of economically independent women who are overburdened by household responsibilities. Additionally, participants reported limited access to marketplaces to sell crops directly and therefore sold to agricultural middlemen. Technical investments in low-cost storage technologies are recommended to ensure more negotiation power with middlemen while also improving household food security.

The impact of forest resource decline: Analyzing forest-related income supplements to reduce income inequality and poverty of the Kouy indigenous people living in Kampong Thom province, Cambodia

ABSTRACTThe study examines the effects of declining forest resources on income inequality and poverty among indigenous people and the impact of forest-related income supplements. We conducted surveys and used the Gini index to compute the contribution of income earned from (1) agriculture, (2) forest-related resources, and (3) self-employment and wages, and to assess the income inequality of households in the study sites. The Gini index of the total income from three clusters of income generating activities was 0.45. Cluster 1: agricultural production was the largest source of income (Gini = 0.30). The share of income from Cluster 2 (Gini index = 0.49), from community forestry and sustainable resource management, including hunting, NTFP collection, selling low quality timber, and plantation farming, contributed an important supplement to reduce income inequality and poverty. Income from Cluster 3 (Gini = 0.93) was highly unequal across the study sites. The indigenous poor remain dependent on forest products for daily food consumption and for additional income. The study suggests that policy makers should urgently consider supporting community forestry and community protected areas by integrating them with payment for ecosystem services. This would help to halt deforestation, promote the welfare of indigenous people, and reduce income inequality in rural communities.

The socio-political context of migration and reproductive health disparities: The case of early sexual initiation among Mexican-origin immigrant young women

Prior research often explains the lower risk of early sexual initiation among foreign-born Mexican-origin young women by a patriarchal and sexually conservative “traditional Latino culture.” This definition overlooks structural factors such as exploitation of migrant workers, and conflates gender inequality and sexual expectations. I use an intersectional framework and the theory of gender and power to explore how gender inequality and sexual expectations are both influenced by structural factors and affect reproductive health outcomes. I integrate data from qualitative interviews with 21 first and second generation Mexican-origin women in 2013–2014 with data from discrete time hazard models with 798 Mexican-origin young women in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Qualitative results demonstrate that gender inequality and sexual expectations in Mexican-origin immigrant households are associated with structural factors. Gender inequality occurs more often in households with family instability, greater poverty, and among parents who migrated independently. Qualitative data also demonstrate that parental gendered expectations are sometimes at odds to what parents are actually doing in the household. Finally, contrary to assumptions that a patriarchal “traditional Latino culture” protects against early sexual initiation, qualitative and multivariate quantitative data suggest that household gender inequality increases risk of early sexual initiation. These findings challenge the utility of a culturalist approach that views culture as determining health behavior among immigrants and demonstrate the need to incorporate an intersectional framework that includes structural factors. This approach may reduce stereotypes and identify meaningful interventions to reduce reproductive health disparities.

Does income inequality dampen growth effect on poverty? evidence from the US county data

This paper estimates the dampening effect of rising inequality on growth effects on poverty rates using the U.S. county level data. According to the “growth elasticity” argument, rising inequality weakens the magnitudes of the growth effects on poverty reduction. The dampening effect is defined as the negative effect of rising inequality on the growth elasticity of poverty and is decomposed into the direct and the indirect dampening effects. Where the direct dampening effect is equal to the estimate of inequality elasticity of poverty. The indirect dampening effect is calculated as the difference between the estimate of a benchmark growth elasticity of poverty and the estimate of growth elasticity of poverty while allowing inequality to change. The benchmark growth elasticity of poverty is estimated from a model which assumes inequality as constant. This study analyzes data on poverty rates, real median household income and inequality from 731 counties of the United States. Data are compiled from two programs of the U.S. Census Bureau and converted into annualized percent changes. Unlike previous studies analyzing survey data from developing countries, U.S. county data are comparable across counties and more reliable. The dampening effects are estimated using the ordinary least square technique applied to five models of poverty. The study finds that income growth does alleviate poverty, but growing inequality directly and indirectly dampens the growth effects on poverty rates. Estimate of the total dampening effect of inequality indicates that the rising inequality is likely to lift 129,405 fewer people out of poverty annually. The growth effect on poverty rates is estimated to be weaker in counties with growing inequality than that in counties with declining and unchanged inequality, confirming the dampening effect of rising inequality. Estimates of the regional effects captured by regional dummy variables suggest that regional specific factors do also dampen growth effect on poverty rates. One reason for such dampening is likely to be tightened-budgetary conditions emanating from cuts in social safety net programs across the United States during 2006-10. Overall, the results from this study indicate that merely pro-growth policies are unlikely to ensure faster poverty reduction in the United States. The policy intervention must also focus on pro-poor growth strategies targeting the incomes of the lower quintiles.

Economic polarization in Poland

The aim of this article is the evaluation whether social and economic policy implemented after the Polish accession to the European Union led to a reduction in income disparities of households in Poland. Variations of those disparities were analyzed by assessing changes in the degree of economic polarization. In addition, changes in income inequality were evaluated. Analyses of changes in the degree of income polarization and income inequality of households in Poland were carried out for the years 2000—2014. In the analysis of the polarization process polarization indices were applied and changes in income inequality were analyzed using inequality coefficients.

Quantifying Household Inequality in Early Pueblo Villages

This article has been embargoed 12 months at the publisher's request and will be released in October 2017.

Women’s earnings and household inequality in OECD countries, 1973–2013

This article shows that women’s rising earnings contributed to reducing inequality in household earnings, with respect to couples. We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) on 1,148,762 coupled households, covering 18 OECD countries and the period from 1973 to 2013. In this period, women’s share of household earnings grew, spouses’ earnings became more strongly and positively correlated in various countries, and inequality in women’s earnings was reduced. Inequality in household earnings increased due to the rising correlation between spouses’ earnings, but was reduced more by the decline of inequality in women’s earnings. Had women’s earnings remained unchanged since the 1970s and 1980s, inequality in household earnings would have been higher around 2010 in all observed OECD countries. Household inequality was reduced least by trends in women’s earnings in countries with a long history of high female labor-force participation, such as Finland (3% reduction) and Sweden (5%), and most in countries that observed a stronger increase in female labor-force participation in recent decades such as Spain (31%) and the Netherlands (41%). As more countries are reaching a plateau in the growth of women’s employment and earnings, the potential for further stimulating women’s employment and earnings to counter both women’s and household inequality seems to be increasingly limited.

Perceived Housing Discrimination and Self-Reported Health: How Do Neighborhood Features Matter?

While the association between perceived discrimination and health has been investigated, little is known about whether and how neighborhood characteristics moderate this association. We situate discrimination in the housing context and use relative deprivation and social capital perspectives to fill the knowledge gap. We applied multilevel logistic modeling to 9,842 adults in 830 neighborhoods in Philadelphia to examine three hypotheses. First, the detrimental effect of discrimination on self-reported health was underestimated without considering neighborhood features as moderators. The estimated coefficient (β) increased from approximately 0.02 to 1.84 or higher. Second, the negative association between discrimination and self-reported health was enhanced when individuals with discrimination experience lived in neighborhoods with higher housing values (β = 0.42). Third, the adverse association of discrimination with self-reported health was attenuated when people reporting discrimination resided in neighborhoods marked by higher income inequality (β = -4.34) and higher concentrations of single-parent households with children (β = -0.03) and minorities (β = -0.01). We not only confirmed the moderating roles of neighborhood characteristics, but also suggested that the relative deprivation and social capital perspectives could be used to understand how perceived housing discrimination affects self-reported health via neighborhood factors.

Assessing the Inequality of Spanish Households through the Carbon Footprint: The 21st Century Great Recession Effect

SummaryInequality has recently become a major concern in economics. Leaving aside its social and economic effects is also possible to trace its environmental consequences, which this article attempts to assess. The indicator to be measured is the household's carbon footprint (CF) for different social groups. The deep economic crisis in the Spanish economy between 2008 and 2013 has increased consumption inequality and doubled the number of households below the poverty line. When focusing on domestic consumption, we found that the shopping basket of all income groups has very similar emissions intensities; therefore, the differences among the household CFs depend mainly on the scale effect (i.e., the size of consumption). However, when international trade is also considered, we found that the emission intensity of imports is bigger than the intensity of all the respective domestic goods. Therefore, the share of imported goods and services by social class will be an important determinant of the respective total CF. Before the crisis, households with higher incomes imported 30% of their total consumption items whereas households with lower income imported only 20% of their consumption. During the crisis, the imports of medium‐high‐income households fell to 20%, whereas low‐ and middle‐income families maintained the same import share, which contributed to the reduction of the total household CF.

From income and housing wealth inequalities to emissions inequality: carbon emissions of households in China

The emerging notion of emissions inequality expands the idea of sustainability by incorporating economic opportunity as well as social needs and rights into environmental costs and benefits. In China, increasing inequality among urban households in terms of both income and housing wealth establishes a pattern of social stratification. An understanding of the association of social and environmental inequality is thus critical for urban sustainability. Based on the Chinese urban household survey from 2002 to 2009, this article employs the lifestyle approach to calculate and analyse the inequality of households by direct and indirect carbon emissions. The correlations among carbon emission inequality with income and housing wealth inequality are estimated with a Heckman procedure. We find that not only income distribution but also housing wealth distributionis an important consideration in understanding environmental inequality in China.

Are Universities Becoming More Unequal?

Observers have expressed concern about growing inequality in resources across universities. But are universities really becoming more unequal? We argue that the typical approach of examining endowment growth alone is not sensible. In line with the literature on household inequality, we focus instead on a comprehensive income measure. We find that although there is considerable inequality among institutions, concerns about the inexorable growth of inequality are overblown. Whether one looks at income, endowment wealth, or expenditure, inequality has been high but stable, exhibiting only negligible increases in recent years. Furthermore, there has been little mobility within the higher education sector.

Inequality, Risk-Sharing and the Crisis: A View from Australia

The Australian economy escaped the 2007-2009 crisis, making it unique among OECD countries. To understand why, we document Australian household inequality cross-sectional stylized facts from 2001-2012 using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Inequality of individual wages, hours worked and earnings remains flat. Household pre-government income inequality and non-durable consumption inequality decline slightly. Household income inequality exceeds non-durable and food consumption inequality during the global financial crisis, suggesting that households partially insure income shocks. The degree of progressivity and private intermediation of risk are high. Both equivalized net financial wealth and net total wealth inequality remain relatively flat. Taxes and transfers seem to reduce the variance of permanent income shocks, rather than transitory income shocks. Our findings suggest that on average households withstood the crisis, by insuring against wealth and income shocks.

Using Identity Processes to Understand Persistent Inequality in Parenting

Despite growing acceptance of a “new fatherhood” urging fathers to be engaged in family life, men’s relative contributions to housework and child care have remained largely stagnant over the past twenty years. Using data from in-depth interviews, we describe how identity processes may contribute to this persistent inequality in parenting. We propose that the specificity of men’s identity standards for the father role is related to role-relevant behavior, and that the vague expectations many associate with “new fatherhood” both contribute to and result from men’s underinvolvement. Consistent with this proposal, we find that while all fathers face difficulty living up to expectations of “new fatherhood,” those with vague identity standards contribute less to carework and are less committed to the father identity, in part because they are less likely to experience self-discrepancy. We outline the implications of our results for future research in identity theory and for understanding inequality in households.

The Living Wage: An Economic Geography Based Explanation for a Policy for Equality

This article examines the theoretical underpinning of living wage campaigns. The article uses evidence, derived from the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey from 2005 to 2008, to examine the extent to which a living wage will address low pay within the labour force. We highlight the greater incidence of low pay within the private sector and then focus upon the public sector where the living wage demand has had most impact. The article builds upon the results from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey with analysis of the British Household Panel Survey in 2007 in order to examine the impact that the introduction of a living wage, within the public sector, would have in reducing household inequality.

Income inequality among older people in rapidly aging Japan

This study examined the mechanisms by which income inequality among households with elderly members changed from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, focusing on the transformation of household structure and on income sources.The data that I analyze in this paper comes from the Comprehensive Survey of People's Living Conditions in Japan (CSLCJ) conducted by the Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in the mid-1980s, the mid-1990s, and the mid-2000s.The main findings of this study can be summarized into the two points. First, income inequality among households with elderly members overall decreased after the mid-1980s. A relatively large decrease in income inequality in elderly households during the bubble economy in the mid-1980s and after its collapse through the early 1990s had occurred at the high-income groups. The examination of the extent of income inequality among the elderly found that household structure is a critical factor. The decline in three-generation households lead to lowering income inequality among households with the elderly.Second, in examining the change in income package of the households with the elderly, it was found out that economic inequality is largely determined by the income of non-elderly members who co-reside with the old parents. Such a phenomenon has not changed despite the large change in the household structure with the elderly members associated with fast transformation of the population since the mid-1980s.

Income distribution in rural EgyptA three-village case

Using household survey data, this paper examines the case of three villages in rural Egypt to shed light on the determinants of income distribution. We first employ decomposition techniques to identify the contribution of farm and non-farm income to overall household inequality. We then use regression analysis to identify the role of different factors in determining the level of farm and non-farm income. Based on the analysis of household income structure and its determinants, we clarify the strong effect of land holding on rural household income distribution, and the differing effects of non-agricultural employment opportunities through the linkage to non-agricultural labor markets. Overall, while non-farm employment is obviously an important determinant of income distribution in rural Egypt, the relationship between land, non-agricultural sector, and household income levels assume different patterns according to the specific socio-economic (village) setting. Key words: Egypt, rural household, income distribution, land, case study.