Income inequality,corruption and subjective well-being

ABSTRACT

Based on the data of CGSS2013, we analyse the relationship between income inequality, corruption and subjective well being using an Ordered Probit model. Our results indicate that income inequality and corruption significantly reduces the subjective well-being of our country’s residents. Furthermore, corruption is an important channel for the negative effect of income inequality on subjective well-being, the impact of income inequality on subjective well-being is mainly achieved by the role of corruption. Specifically, the impacts vary according to hukou. Higher degree of income inequality indeed reduces the subjective well-being of urban residents, while it has a positive effect on subjective well-being of rural residents. Corruption has a significant negative impact on the subjective well-being of urban and rural residents. There is heterogeneity in the influence of different income levels in rural areas. The study in this paper shows that anti-corruption and narrowing the income gap are the two major grippers to improve the well-being of the residents.     

HOW DO EUROPEANS EVALUATE INCOME DISTRIBUTIONS? AN ASSESSMENT BASED ON HAPPINESS SURVEYS

The purpose of this paper is to measure the evaluation of income inequality by European citizens. Starting from the concept of a social welfare function defined on income distributions the paper estimates the degree and nature of inequality aversion of Europeans. It uses subjective well-being (SWB) as an empirical measure of welfare and estimates how SWB is related to average income and measures of income inequality (from an appropriate class). The estimated relationship is used to determine those inequality measures which qualify as proper representations of people's inequality aversion.     

Income Mobility, Inequality and Social Welfare

It is often argued that an observation of rising annual income inequality need not have negative normative implications. The argument is that if there has been a sufficiently large simultaneous increase in mobility, the inequality of income measured over a longer time period can be lower despite the rise in annual inequality. In this paper, it is shown by example that if normative implications are drawn from a standard social welfare function, the set of circumstances put forward in the above argument are not sufficient to guarantee that social welfare will improve. The reason is that even though rising mobility does reduce longer term inequality, it also increases the variability of income profiles over time and the latter has a detrimental social welfare effect. Hence, there are two types of mobility: one which reduces inequality (regression to the mean), but another that increases inequality (relative movements uncorrelated with incomes). Further, if individuals' aversion to income variabiltiy is sufficiently larger than the social welfare judge's aversion to inequality, then an increase in mobility, no matter how large, cannot offset the negative normative effect of rising annual inequality.     

Fairness and inequality tolerance: Evidence from the Life in Transition Survey

This paper examines the link between inequality and individual well-being using household survey data from 27 transition economies, where income inequality increased considerably since 1989. A test of inequality aversion in individual preferences that draws on the Fehr and Schmidt (1999) specification of inequality aversion is proposed, and the difficulties of implementing it in a non-experimental setting are discussed. Estimates based on this model confirm aversion to inequality among individuals both in the pooled sample and separately among the EU and non-EU countries. The Gini index, on the other hand, is unable to capture this negative effect of inequality on well-being. Notably, inequality aversion is not intrinsic. Rather, it appears to be tied to a concern with the fairness of the institutions underlying the distribution of fortunes in society. The evidence is suggestive of inequality of opportunity driving attitudes toward overall inequality.     

LIFE SATISFACTION AND INCOME INEQUALITY

Do people care about income inequality and does income inequality affect subjective well‐being? Welfare theories can predict either a positive or a negative impact of income inequality on subjective well‐being and empirical research has found evidence of a positive, negative, or non‐significant relation. This paper attempts to determine some of the possible causes of such empirical heterogeneity. Using a very large sample of world citizens we test the consistency of the effect of income inequality in predicting life satisfaction. We find that income inequality has a negative and significant effect on life satisfaction. This result is robust to changes of regressors and estimation choices and also persists across different income groups and across different types of countries. However, this relation is easily obscured or reversed by multicollinearity generated by the use of country and year fixed effects. This is particularly true if the number of data points for inequality is small, which is a common feature of cross‐country or longitudinal studies.     

收入不平等、社会犯罪与国民幸福感-来自中国的经验证据

本文利用世界价值观调查数据,对中国收入不平等与居民主观幸福感之间的关系及其作用机制进行了实证研究。结论发现,中国的收入不平等对居民的主观幸福感有显著的负面影响,而且它对农村居民和低收入者的负面影响要显著大于城市居民和高收入者。此外,收入不平等除了自身对居民的幸福感有显著负面影响外,还通过社会犯罪间接地对居民的幸福感产生负面影响。     

机会不平等与社会流动预期研究——基于CGSS数据的经验分析

随着"中国梦"的提出,对于居民社会流动预期的研究受到了广泛关注.现有文献对于社会流动预期影响因素的相关研究较为匮乏,文章在政府以实现社会公平正义为目标的改革背景之下,研究我国机会不平等对居民社会流动预期的影响,具有重要的理论和现实意义.研究表明:机会不平等作用于社会流动预期的总效应为正,即当前机会不平等程度越高的地区,人们向上的社会流动预期越显著;并且,这种正向影响在家庭背景条件较差、年龄较大、受教育程度较高以及非农业户籍群体中更加显著.文章认为,在政府以实现社会公平正义为目标的改革背景下,人们预期未来机会不平等程度会下降,导致机会不平等直接效应的不利影响受到间接效应的抵消,从而出现上述看似"有悖常理"的结论.实证结果也在一定程度上证实了间接效应的存在.因此,相对于当前现实存在的机会不平等,人们对未来机会不平等变化的预期对其社会流动预期的影响更为突出.政府部门应当在贯彻落实公平政策的同时,实施必要的预期管理,增强人们对政府部门的信任,使其保持对未来改革政策的乐观预期,从而维持当前较为良好的居民社会流动预期.     

Local Area Inequality and Worker Well-Being

This paper uses General Social Survey data linked to Census data to investigate the effect of local area income and income inequality on worker well-being. Others have found a robust negative correlation between reference group income and self-reported well-being. However, in many cases the reference group is defined as a large geographic area. This paper adds to the literature in two ways. First, it considers multiple nested geographic reference groups with US data. Second, it explicitly considers income inequality in addition to the level of income. It is found that both income and income inequality are positively associated with well-being at the census tract level, but negatively associated at the county level. Further, the effect of inequality on well-being decreases as income increases at the census tract and county level, while it increases at the state level.     

Regional income mobility in large cities throughout China

We investigated the regional income mobility in China for the year 1994–2016. Using the data collected from 185 prefecture-level cities, we find evidence that the regional income mobility was increasing over past two decades. By connecting income mobility with inequality index, we could draw a graph indicating an inverse U-shape relation between the two variables. We also provide the regional income mobility of the world for comparison.     

Who benefits from big government? A life satisfaction approach

Which impact does government size have on life satisfaction, and how do effects of bigger government differ between income groups in society? Previous studies typically employed country averages and thus neglected possibly heterogeneous happiness effects between income groups. This paper addresses empirically the effects of government spending on subjective well-being of individuals belonging to different income groups. Our analysis is based on individual data from 25 European countries participating in the European Social Survey. In contrast to most previous studies we take account of the endogeneity between relative income position and reported life satisfaction by an instrumental variable approach. Our results suggest, first, that most government spending categories, including social protection, are on average negatively related to individual well-being. Secondly, estimated marginal effects of health, education and social protection spending at different income levels show that spending increases always have a stronger negative effect on high income groups’ well-being than on low income groups’ life satisfaction. For all government spending categories, marginal happiness effects of higher public spending are clearly negative for income groups at the top.     

Household Income Inequality and Income Mobility: Implications Towards Equalizing Longer-Term Incomes in India

This paper addresses three important questions. First, what are the trends, levels and sources of income inequality in India? Second, how have been the patterns of income mobility? And finally, exploring the relationship between income mobility and income inequality in the context of India. Results, based on recent India Human Development Survey (IHDS) longitudinal data, advocate that not only is income inequality very high, nonetheless, it has increased – mainly attributable to different income sources – in India. The paper also focused on whether or not this income mobility equalizes longer-term incomes. Results suggest income mobility has resulted in-albeit not robust- equalizing longer-term incomes. Thus, based on imperative findings, the paper suggests, the nature of longer-term well-being is crucial to designing policy interventions to effectively tackle inequality and in this context, economic mobility can be seen as an avenue to long-term equality.     

环境不平等降低了居民幸福感吗？——基于中国综合社会调查（CGSS）微观数据的实证研究

本文通过将省级、城市数据与中国综合社会调查（Chinese General Social Survey,CGSS）微观数据相匹配,在测度环境基尼系数基础上,采用Probit和中介效应模型研究了环境不平等对居民幸福感的影响路径。结果表明：工业废水测度下的环境不平等显著降低了居民幸福感,而工业二氧化硫和工业烟粉尘测度下的环境不平等却显著提高了居民幸福感。环境不平等对居民幸福感的影响存在区域和城乡异质性,环境不平等对东部地区居民幸福感的影响大于中西部地区;工业废水测度下的环境不平等对城镇居民的影响比农村居民大,工业废气则相反。在环境不平等影响幸福感的路径中,经济增长和健康状况是重要的作用机制,经济增长发挥了显著的正向调节作用和中介作用,健康状况只发挥中介作用。因此,加强环境治理,统筹区域和城乡协调发展,坚持经济建设与改善居民健康状况,对新时代中国政府提高居民幸福感,走出“伊斯特林悖论”有重要意义。     

Income inequality, consumption, and social-status seeking

Using the Chinese Urban Household Survey data between 1997 and 2006, we find that income inequality has a negative (positive) effect on household consumption net of education expenditures (savings) even after we control for household income. We argue that people save to improve their social status when social status is associated with pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. Rising income inequality can strengthen the incentives of status-seeking savings by increasing the benefit of improving status, and by enlarging the wealth level required for status upgrading. We also find that the negative effect of income inequality on consumption is stronger for poorer and younger people and that income inequality stimulates more education investment, which are consistent with the status-seeking hypothesis.     

Growth, income distribution and well-being in transition countries

We apply several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to international and intertemporal comparisons of well-being in transition countries. Our well-being measures drastically change the impression of levels and changes in well-being compared to a traditional reliance on income measures. Due to low inequality and moderate income levels, socialist countries enjoyed relatively high levels of economic well-being. In the transition process, rising inequality and falling incomes have led to a dramatic absolute decline in well-being and a considerable drop in relative well-being vis-à-vis non-transition countries. We also find a close correlation between income losses and inequality increases. While the transition has been successful in expanding political and civil rights, our indicators suggest that most transition countries are still below the level of economic well-being of the late 1980s.
JEL classification: D6, O15, P27.     

The Perception of Inequality of Opportunity in Europe

Does the way in which scholars measure inequality of opportunity correspond to how people perceive it? What other factors influence individual perception of this phenomenon? To answer these questions, we must first clarify how scholars define and measure inequality of opportunity. We discuss the possible mechanisms linking objective measures to subjective perception of the phenomenon, then propose a measure of perceived inequality of opportunity, and finally test our hypothesis by merging data from two sources: the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2011) and the International Social Survey Programme (2009). We suggest that the prevailing perception of the degree of unequal opportunity in a large sample of respondents is only weakly correlated with its objective measure. We estimate a multilevel model considering both individual‐ and country‐level controls to explain individual perception of unequal opportunity. Our estimates suggest that the two most adopted measures of inequality of opportunity have no clear role in explaining its perception. Conversely, other country‐level variables and personal experiences of intergenerational social mobility are important determinants of how inequality of opportunity is perceived.     

A refinement of the relationship between economic growth and income inequality

There is mixed evidence in the literature of a clear relationship between income inequality and economic growth. Most of that work has focused almost exclusively on developed economies. In what we believe to be a first effort, our emphasis is solely on developing economics, which we classify as high-income and low-income developing countries (HIDC and LIDC). We make such distinction on theoretical and empirical grounds. Empirically, the World Bank has classified developing economies in this manner since 1978. The data in our sample are also supportive of such classifications. We provide theoretical scaffolding that uses asymmetric credit constraints as a premise for separating developing economies in such a way. We find strong evidence of a negative relationship between income inequality and economic growth in LIDC to be in stark contrast with a positive inequality–growth relationship for HIDC. Both correlations are statistically significant across multiple econometric specifications. Using international data from 1960 to 2010, this article explores the effect of income inequality on economic growth using dynamic panel technique, such as system generalized method of moments (GMM) that is believed to mitigate endogenous problem. These results are strikingly contrasting to the previous estimation results of Forbes (2000) displaying significant positive correlation between two variables in the short to medium term.     

区域一体化政策、要素流动与居民获得感提升*——基于政策文本的量化分析

区域一体化政策实施的意图是通过弱化要素流动壁垒、缩小区域发展差距，从而提升居民获得感。本文从交通互联互通、行政壁垒弱化、经济合作和劳动力流动四个角度构建政策措施指数，从缩小地区居民收入差距和改善居民获得感两个层面研究区域一体化战略的政策效果。研究发现：（1）区域一体化政策在缩小地区居民收入差距的基础上，可对等地提升居民获得感，行政措施是提升居民获得感的主要政策措施。（2）地区居民收入差距的收敛是居民获得感提升的客观基础，区域一体化政策缩小地区居民收入差距的政策效果在不同阶段和不同地区具有异质性。（3）区域一体化政策中的交通措施和行政措施通过引导资本形成扩散效应能显著缩小地区居民收入差距，是提升居民获得感的主要渠道。     

Income Mobility and Income Inequality in Rural China

The economic literature has argued for a long time that income mobility could attenuate the degree of cross-sectional inequality by offering people opportunities to improve their socio-economic position. Using the longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1989 to 2011, we measure income mobility as the degree to which longer-term incomes are distributed more or less equally than yearly income. Five main results are emphasized. First, there is strong income mobility in rural China that partly offsets yearly income inequality. Second, income mobility has decreased since the 2000s, indicating that income distribution is becoming more rigid. Third, mobility is mainly associated with transitory income fluctuations, particularly in the two tails of the distribution. Fourth, income mobility has an equalizing effect on income distribution. Fifth, we show that non-agricultural income mobility has substantially increased over the period and that its equalizing nature has also recently increased. While the development of the non-agriculture sector in rural China was a crucial factor in explaining the increase in rural inequality until the mid-2000s, we suggest that the large-scale generalisation of such non-agricultural opportunities partly accounts for the decline in rural inequality observed since the mid-2000s.     

Optimistic income expectations and meeting those expectations: What matters for well-being in a developing country?

This paper examines the impact of income expectations and the extent to which these expectations are met, on subjective well-being. For the Indonesian sample, expectations had asymmetric effects on well-being, with pessimistic expectations having a strong adverse effect compared with a weak positive effect of optimism. Optimism improves only females' and not males' well-being while pessimism has the reverse effect on both genders' well-being. Although unmet expectations reduced well-being for all subgroups, the mediating role of social capital to negate this was limited to some subgroups. Results point toward a gendered policy agenda and the rural–urban divide to improve well-being.     

The impact of education expansion on wage inequality

The findings on education expansion and income inequality have important implications for policymakers to implement effective policies to reduce income inequality. This study attempts to explain how education expansion affects income inequality by education distribution and the rate of return to education. We decompose the effect of education expansion on wage gaps into price effect and structure effect. We compare the income inequality from 2002 to 2013 using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) 2002 and CHIP2013 survey data and employ FFL decomposition method. Our findings suggest that income inequality increased in 2013 and that income inequality among the high-income groups increased even more significantly. The structure effect of education expansion on income inequality is negative, when average education increases one year, the income gap between 80th and 20th will decrease 1.2%, in other words, education expansion decreases income inequality by allowing a wide range of individuals to attend college. However, this effect is offset by the price effect, which is positive and much more significant in magnitude. One extra year of average education will increase income gap by 29% which means that the demand for high-skilled labour is increasing faster than the supply and thus lead to the increasing premium for higher education return.