公共支出结构对收入不均等影响研究——基于公共服务均等化视角分析

收入不均等影响到社会公平与经济发展,而收入公平分配是政府的主要责任,也是政府公共支出的依据之一.影响收入分配不均等的因素有很多,其中由于政府相应责任缺位,公共支出结构偏向,使得公共支出中基本公共服务支出不足是其主要原因.本文实证分析得出公共支出总量与结构严重影响基本公共服务供给,进而影响着收入不均等的水平,成为社会公平和稳定的重要因素.政府应从制度上进行公共支出改革,规范督促地方政府优化公共支出结构,不断提高对民生支出的主动性,逐步缩小基本公共服务的差距,缩小收入不均等的水平.     

Why Did Income Inequality in Germany Not Increase Further After 2005?

While income inequality in Germany considerably increased in the years before 2005, this trend stopped after 2005. We address the question of what factors were responsible for the break in the inequality trend after 2005. Our analysis suggests that income inequality in Germany did not continue to rise after 2005 for the following reasons. First, we observe that the general rise in wage inequality that explained a lot of the inequality increase before 2005, became less steep (but did not stop) after 2005. Second, despite further increases in wage inequality after 2005, inequality in annual labour incomes did not increase further after 2005 because increased within‐year employment opportunities compensated otherwise rising inequality in annual labour incomes. Third, income inequality did not fall in a more marked way after 2005 because also the middle and the upper part of the distribution benefited from the employment boom after 2006. Finally, we provide evidence that the effect of a wide range of other factors that are often suspected to have influenced the distribution such as capital incomes, household structures, population ageing, changes in the tax and transfer system and the financial crisis of 2008 did not significantly alter the distribution after 2005.     

Long term trends in fair and unfair inequality in the United States

This article analyses the microeconomic sources of wage inequality in the United States from 1967–2012. Decomposing inequality into factors categorized by degree of personal responsibility, education explains over twice as much of inequality today as 45 years ago. However, neither hours worked nor education, industry, marital status, or geographical location can explain the rise in income inequality. In fact, ‘unfair’ inequality (income disparity derived from non-responsibility factors) has risen faster than ‘fair’ inequality (income disparity derived from responsibility factors), regardless of the set of variables chosen as fair sources of inequality. We further examine income inequalities within gender and racial groups, finding substantial heterogeneity. Overall, using micro data to understand the sources of inequality and how these changes over time can provide better information for policymakers motivated to combat rising inequality.     

Optimal Tax-Transfer Systems and Redistributive Policy

In this paper we develop optimal yardsticks to gauge the effectiveness of given tax and benefit policies in reducing inequality. We show that the conjunction of the optimal tax and optimal benefits policies constitutes the optimal tax-and-benefit policy, given the tax and benefit budget sizes. A decomposition formula enables trends in the inequality impact of taxes and benefits to be explained in terms of changing policy effectivess (targeting) and budget size effects. The analysis incorporates a distributional judgement parameter, for sensitivity analysis, and concludes with an examination of the Finnish case for the period 1971–1990.
JEL Classification : D 63     

Equality of opportunity and educational achievement in Portugal

Portugal has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe, and low wages and unemployment are concentrated among low skill individuals. Education is an important determinant of inequality. However, there are large differences in the educational attainment of different individuals in the population, and the sources of these differences emerge early in the life-cycle when families play a central role in individual development. We estimate that most of the variance of school achievement at age 15 is explained by family characteristics. Observed school inputs explain very little of adolescent performance. Children from highly educated parents benefit of rich cultural environments in the home and become highly educated adults. Education policy needs to be innovative: (1) it needs to explicitly recognize the fundamental long run role of families on child development; (2) it needs to acknowledge the failure of traditional input based policies.

收入不平等对人口健康影响的研究综述

自1970年代以来,西方学者从理论假设和实证研究两个角度对收入不平等对于人口健康产生的影响进行了深入而广泛的研究,采用跨国数据进行的研究基本上证实了收入不平等对于人口健康产生的不利影响,而采用跨地区数据以及个人数据进行的研究得出的结论则不尽一致.本文主要从理论假设、实证研究和影响途径三个角度对收入不平等对于人口健康的相关研究进行梳理和归纳,以期对我国的相关研究有所启示.     

Status-seeking behavior,the evolution of income inequality,and growth

Using an overlapping generations model, this paper investigates the implications of status-seeking behavior, induced by preferences for relative income, for the evolution of income inequality. When average income rises, an individual’s marginal utility of their own income may increase (keeping up with the Joneses, or KUJ), or decrease (running away from the Joneses, or RAJ). It is shown that income inequality is shrinking over time in the KUJ economy, whereas it is expanding in the RAJ economy. We also explore the implications for long-run growth and inequality, in the existence of both KUJ and RAJ agents. I am truly grateful to Koichi Futagami for his encouragement and guidance in writing this paper. I have benefitted from comments by an anonymous referee, Been-Lon Chen, Giacomo Corneo, Akiomi Kitagawa, Kazuo Mino, Kazuhiro Yuki, and seminar participants at Osaka University, the 2006 Japanese Economic Association Autumn Meeting at Osaka City University, the Far Eastern Meeting of Econometric Society 2007 at Taipei, SER Conference 2007 at Singapore, and the European Meeting of Econometric Society 2007 at Budapest. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. The financial support from JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists is greatly acknowledged.     

我国收入分配失衡对消费需求的影响分析

伴随着经济的发展,我国收入分配情况却呈现出失衡的状态,收入差距正在扩大。收入分配情况直接影响一国的消费需求总量和结构,我国的消费需求内需不足,为利用内需拉动经济增长带来较大阻力。为此,今后应致力于消除由不合理因素造成的收入差距过大的问题,继续深化产业结构调整,充分发挥市场的调节作用,发挥政府在收入再分配中的重要作用,提高整个社会的福利水平。     

我国收入不平等、金融发展和消费需求波动的实证研究:1978～2001

本文考察了收入不平等与总消费需求变动之间的联系,在高收入地区,不平等程度越大似乎消费需求波动越大,而在低收入地区,收入不平等越大,消费需求波动反而较小。本文找到证据表明金融发展水平能有助于解释为什么收入分配在高收入和低收入地区中影响消费需求的短期波动是不同的,本文的政策含义是,加快低收入地区如中西部的经济和金融发展步伐,加大金融发展相机调整的力度。