Disparities in Australian Regional Incomes: Are They Widening or Narrowing?

In this study we examine Australian census data on regional incomes for the period 1976–91. Following a discussion of theories and empirical evidence regarding regional income adjustment, the regional dispersion of per capita income is analysed for the six Australian states and at the sub-state level (statistical divisions, SDs). The coefficient of variation is used as the measure of dispersion, and Gini coefficients are also calculated to analyse income equality within regions. For Australia, the cross-state dispersion of per capita incomes increased over the period, whereas there was neither convergence nor divergence of incomes among Australia's 57 SDs. In addition, the intrastate dispersion of per capita incomes across SDs remained largely unaltered over the period. Gini coefficients indicated that across income strata, the distribution of incomes both within states and within SDs has become more equal.     

河南省城乡收入差距的实证分析

选取2003--2012年数据,通过人均可支配收入、人均消费、基尼系数等指标对河南省城乡居民收入差距进行测度,并分析河南省各地区城乡收入差距状况。河南省城乡居民人均收入和人均消费的绝对差距都在持续加大,其相对差距呈缩小趋势;全省收入分配差距较大,城镇内部和农村内部的收入分配相对合理,但农村内部的贫富差距大于城镇。最后,对缩小城乡收入差距提出相关对策与建议。     

The Changing Shape of Global Inequality 1820–2000; Exploring a New Dataset

A new dataset for charting the development of global inequality between 1820 and 2000 is presented, based on a large variety of sources and methods for estimating (gross household) income inequality. On this basis we estimate the evolution of global income inequality over the past two centuries. Two sets of benchmarks about between‐country inequality (the Maddison 1990 benchmark and the recent 2005 ICP round) are taken into account. We find that between 1820 and 1950, increasing per capita income is combined with increasing global inequality. After 1950, global inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient or the Theil index remains more or less constant. It also appears that the global income distribution was uni‐modal in the nineteenth century, became increasingly bi‐modal between 1910 and 1970 with two world wars, a depression and de‐globalization, and was suddenly transformed back into a uni‐modal distribution between 1980 and 2000.     

中国跨越“中等收入陷阱”的路径突破与政策应对*——基于地区收入差距视角

“中等收入陷阱”在本质上是收入与增长非线性相关系,而威廉姆森拐点决定着中国经济发展是否落入“中等收入陷阱”的关键。本文基于空间自相关理论提出空间基尼系数的一个分解框架,并运用威廉姆森“倒U型”理论构建“中等收入陷阱”理论模型。结果表明：中国地区收入差距与人均GDP之间存在“倒U型”非线性关系,更确切地说是S型关系。以平滑转化回归模型测算,中国存在人均GDP为4 18930美元拐点,并于2005年越过拐点,但进入地区差距收敛的“高体制”路径仍有一定差距。因此,中国在政策应对上要进一步通过实施高起点的区域协调发展战略,健全宏观配套政策,配合深化收入分配体制改革,从而成功地跨越“中等收入陷阱”。     

THE DISTRIBUTIONAL CONSEQUENCES DURING THE EARLY STAGES OF RUSSIA'S TRANSITION

We consider the distributional consequences at a national level in Russia during the initial phase of market reforms between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. Although the incomes of many individuals changed favourably under the reforms during this period, average real household per capita income declined between 1985 and 1992. In particular during the first year of major reform in 1992 households at the lower end of the income distribution seemed to incur the largest fall in income. As a consequence there was a rise in measured income inequality. The Gini coefficient, estimated by various researchers to have been around 27 percent between the late 1960s and early 1990s. we estimate to have increased to 32.2 percent by the end of 1992. We also estimate that poverty increased with 18.5 percent of the population on incomes lying below the official subsistence level at the end of 1992.     

Disentangling the Poverty Effects of Sectoral Output,Prices, and Policies in India

This paper attempts to disentangle the poverty effects of key policy variables that directly affect the poor (namely the government‐led channel of development spending and financing) in both agricultural and non‐agricultural sectors after accounting for the effect of respective sectoral per capita income and prices, using data from India over five decades. The paper emphasizes the sectoral composition of income and prices as mechanisms influencing the level of poverty and establishes empirically that it is the rise in non‐agricultural per capita income that reduces rural poverty via the channel of internal migration, after having controlled for the variation in key components of fiscal spending and monetary/financial policy via the availability of credit. Uneven sectoral growth pattern explains why urban poverty becomes a spill‐over of persistent rural poverty when the agricultural sector shrinks. While checking for robustness, there is evidence that the rise in non‐agricultural income alone may not reduce rural poverty, when measured in terms of rural infant mortality rate as a non‐income indicator of well‐being.     

Institutional Quality Mediates the Effect of Human Capital on Economic Performance

This paper considers the relationship between institutional quality, educational outcomes, and economic performance. More specifically, we seek to establish the linkages by which government effectiveness affects per capita income via its mediating impact on human capital formation. Our empirical approach adopts a two‐stage strategy that estimates national‐level educational production functions that include government effectiveness as a covariate, and uses these estimates as instruments for human capital in cross‐country regressions of per capita income. Our results identify a significant and positive effect of human capital on per capita income levels, and partially resolves the inconsistency between macro‐ and micro‐level studies of the effect of human capital on income. The results remain robust to alternative specifications, extension to a panel setting, subsamples of the data and fully endogenous institutions.     

Inequality and economic growth: the role of initial income

We estimate a panel model where the relationship between inequality and GDP per capita growth depends on countries’ initial incomes. Estimates of the model show that the relationship between inequality and GDP per capita growth is significantly decreasing in countries’ initial incomes. Results from instrumental variables regressions show that in Low Income Countries transitional growth is boosted by greater income inequality. In High Income Countries inequality has a significant negative effect on transitional growth. For the median country in the world, that in the year 2015 had a PPP GDP per capita of around 10000USD, IV estimates predict that a 1 percentage point increase in the Gini coefficient decreases GDP per capita growth over a 5-year period by over 1 percentage point; the long-run effect on the level of GDP per capita is around ??5%.     

Poverty is a Public Bad: Panel Evidence From Subjective Well‐Being Data

Previous research has found that subjective well‐being (SWB) is lower for individuals classified as being in poverty. We extend the poverty‐SWB literature by focusing on aggregate poverty. Using panel data for 39,239 individuals living in Germany from 2005–2013, we show that people's SWB is negatively correlated with the regional (state‐level) poverty ratio while controlling for individual poverty status and poverty intensity. This suggests that poverty is a public bad. The negative relationship between aggregate poverty and SWB is more salient in the upper segments of the income distribution and is robust to controlling for the rate of unemployment and per capita GDP. The character of poverty as a public bad suggests that poverty alleviation is a matter not only of distributive justice, but of allocative efficiency.     

The impact of work and non‐work migration on household welfare,poverty and inequality

This article estimates the impact of work migration and non‐work migration on per capita income, per capita expenditures, poverty and inequality in Vietnam using data from the two most recent Vietnam Household and Living Standard Surveys. We find that both work migration and non‐work migration have a positive impact on per capita expenditures of migrant‐sending households. Non‐work migration significantly decreases the incidence, depth and severity of national poverty. The effect of work migration on poverty is much smaller. Still, while work migration does not lift people out of poverty, it makes their poverty less severe. In addition, both work migration and non‐work migration decrease inequality, albeit only very slightly.     

Not by growth alone: The role of the distribution of income in regional diversity in poverty reduction

This study examines the role of the distribution of income in determining the responsiveness of poverty to income growth and changes in income inequality using panel data of 58 developing countries for the period 1980-1998. We show that the large cross-regional variation in the capacity of income growth to reduce poverty, i.e. the income elasticity, is largely explained by differences in the initial distribution of income and present region and time specific estimates of the income and Gini elasticities of poverty. We find that the income elasticity of poverty in the mid-1990s equals −1.31 on average and ranges from −0.71 for Sub-Saharan Africa to −2.27 for the Middle East and North Africa, and that the Gini elasticity of poverty equals 0.80 on average and ranges from 0.01 in South Asia to 1.73 in Latin America. Furthermore we show that while differing income growth rates account for most of the regional diversity in poverty trends, the additional impact of differences across regions in rates of inequality change and income and inequality elasticities of poverty is almost always significant and far too large to be ignored, most notably so in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.     

POVERTY AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN PUERTO RICO, 1969–89: TRENDS AND SOURCES

The paper examines Puerto Rican trends in income distribution during the 1970s and 1980s, then attempts to ascertain the source of the changes in income inequality through a decomposition of the Gini coefficient by factor income source. The study finds that poverty and inequality declined unambiguously during the twenty-year period. The source of the fall in income concentration was found to have been tied, not to changes in the distribution or share of earned income, but to that of unearned income, particularly transfers. These appear to have also accounted for the decline in poverty.     

A Decomposition Analysis of Regional Poverty in Russia

The paper applies a new decomposition technique to the study of variations in poverty across the regions of Russia. The procedure, which is based on the Shapley value in cooperative game theory, allows the deviation in regional poverty levels from the all‐Russia average to be attributed to three proximate sources: per capita income, inequality, and local prices. Contrary to expectation, regional poverty variations turn out to be due more to differences in inequality across regions than to differences in real income per capita. However, when real income per capita is split into nominal income and price components, differences in nominal incomes emerge as more important than either inequality or price effects for the majority of regions.     

Refitting the Kuznets curve using a gender-specific threshold model

Previous studies have reached mixed conclusions regarding the relationship between inequality and per capita income. These studies, however, fail to consider gender differences in income inequality and how these may impact on the relationship between income inequality and per capita income. Using Australian taxation statistics, we derive three sets of Gini coefficients (i.e. female, male and total) for the period 1950–2013. We then examine the relationship between inequality and real per capita income and find that a gender-specific threshold panel regression outperforms three other conventional models. Our findings suggest that ‘one set of coefficients does not fit all’ in that the use of aggregate and constant coefficients may mask variations within, and between, gender inequality over time.     

我国城镇居民收入差距演变及"十一五"趋势分析

笔者通过综合使用基尼系数、分组收入份额和分组人均可支配收入实际增长率等指标,多角度定量分析我国城镇居民收入差距的演变过程,认为1985年以来,城镇居民收入差距一直在不断扩大;收入差距加速扩大的局面在2006年开始出现扭转势头。立足于宏观经济背景,作者预测"十一五"期间分组收入份额差距将继续缩小,基尼系数将会降低,有望实现"十一五"规划和十七大提出的"逐步扭转收入分配差距扩大趋势"的目标。     

MEASURING NON‐ECONOMIC WELL‐BEING ACHIEVEMENT

Income per capita and most widely reported, non‐ or non‐exclusively income based human well‐being indicators are highly correlated among countries. Yet many countries exhibit higher achievement in the latter than predicted by the former. The reverse is true for many other countries. This paper commences by extracting the inter‐country variation in a composite of various widely‐reported, non‐income‐based well‐being indices not accounted for by variations in income pre capita. This extraction is interpreted inter alia as a measure of non‐economic well‐being. The paper then looks at correlations between this extraction and a number of new or less widely‐used well‐being measures, in an attempt to find the measure that best captures these achievements. A number of indicators are examined, including measures of poverty, inequality, health status, education status, gender bias, empowerment, governance and subjective well‐being.     

On the impact of innovation and inequality in economic growth

We present robust results on the empirical relationship among income inequality, innovation, and economic growth for a panel dataset of 74 countries over the period 1996–2014. We estimate pairwise causality tests to show that there is bidirectional causality between GDP per capita and R&D, while R&D causes the Gini index of income inequality, and it causes human capital. Allowing coefficients to be different across cross-sections of countries, we get in any case a pairwise bi-directionality. By dynamic panel data estimations, when regressing R&D on GDP per capita, we obtain a threshold value of 0.16% of R&D such that for values above it there is economic growth. While regressing R&D on the Gini index, we get a threshold of 0.10% of R&D above which, the income distribution begins to improve. Finally, we estimate a growth equation that depends on R&D, income inequality, and physical capital. We obtain two thresholds, one of 38.79 for the Gini (above which the economic growth decreases), and one of 0.06% for R&D such that above it, economic growth is rising.     

Income inequality,unemployment, and poverty in Nigeria: a vector autoregressive approach

The main features of poverty are low levels of consumption and income, a fact‐of‐life in most African countries. This paper analyzes the fundamental trends of per capita income, government capital expenditure, the human development index, and the rate of unemployment in the Nigeria. A vector autoregressive model finds that: A reduced unemployment rate improves human development and consequently reduces poverty. As growth in public capital expenditure rises, unemployment falls and the human development index improves. Therefore, infrastructure‐based policies, which initially reduce unemployment, will also improve the living conditions of Nigerians in the end.     

收入增长和分配对我国农村减贫的影响-方法、特征与证据

改革开放30年来,在农村居民收入水平快速增长的大背景下,农村减贫进程却表现出明显的波动性和不一致性。基于此,本文在贫困分解的基础上,运用贫困弹性的动态特征,从理论和实证的角度探讨了收入增长和收入分配对贫困减少的影响,解释上述问题。文章发现:(1)人均收入水平越高,贫困越有可能和收入不平等联系在一起;(2)收入不平等越严重的地区,贫困对收入不平等的反应越迟钝;(3)1998年是我国农村反贫困性质发生改变的拐点。文章建议,今后农村反贫困政策的重点应从以促进收入增长的开发式扶贫向以改善收入分配为重点的社会保护式扶贫政策转变。     

中国地区居民生活水平比较——基于全球夜间灯光数据

当衡量一国或地区居民生活水平时,统计学上一般有收入和消费两种视角。本文利用城乡住户调查中的人均可支配收入和国民经济核算中的居民消费水平,以全球夜间灯光数据为参照,综合收入端与消费端信息,对1997—2016年中国31个地区的真实生活水平进行比较分析。研究证实,灯光亮度与消费水平和人均可支配收入之间均存在显著的线性关系,可以用来估算真实生活水平。根据不同模型的回归结果得到,真实生活水平的最优无偏估计中消费水平的权重范围为（2795%,3831%）,人均可支配收入水平的权重范围为（6169%,7205%）。相对于消费水平,人均可支配收入更能准确地反映真实生活水平。本文进一步分析发现,样本期内居民生活水平增速小于人均GDP增速,可见经济的发展并未完全转化为生活水平的提高。中西部地区与东部地区的生活水平仍然存在巨大差距,东部地区的平均生活水平分别是中部和西部地区的17倍和21倍。