A Class of Social Welfare Functions That Depend on Mean Income and Income Polarization

A well‐established strategy for evaluating alternative income distributions is based on the use of an abbreviated social welfare function that depends only on mean income and an inequality index. In keeping with this literature, we study the existence of social welfare functions that can be written as a trade‐off between efficiency and income polarization. This paper proposes a class of social welfare functions consistent with the Esteban and Ray, and Duclos, Esteban and Ray income polarization indices. For this result, we expand the domain for personal preferences to incorporate not only own income but also the well‐being of others. In addition, we link our proposal to the literature on relative satisfaction. The approach is illustrated by an empirical application using the CPS database for the United States in the period 1991–2010.     

浙江省县域福利水平的时空变化

居民福利水平一直是决策层与理论界关注的重要课题。文章选取浙江69个县级行政区域的数据,利用SPSS、ARCGIS软件进行因子分析、空间相关性和可视化处理,研究各县福利水平的时空变化及空间相关性。结果表明:县域福利水平呈现东北高、西南低的分异状态且年度变化幅度较大,大部分地区福利水平的排位发生变化;区域内极化现象明显,辐射效应相对较弱;类型数量结构由"橄榄型"向"金字塔型"转变。另外,热点图显示:热点区域空间格局的主要结构特征保持不变,但南部地区正经历着冷热点区域的广泛调整。     

The Child Support Grant and teenage childbearing in South Africa

This paper examines data on teenage fertility and patterns of uptake of the Child Support Grant in South Africa from 1998 to 2005, to assess how far this Grant is associated with the trend in teenage childbearing. Teenage fertility was fairly high during the 1980s when state financial assistance to teenage mothers did not adequately serve the majority of South Africans. Since the first half of the 1990s, however, teenage fertility has steadily declined. This trend was already underway when the grant was expanded in 1998 to reach beneficiaries in all sub-groups of the national population. If teenage girls were having children primarily to benefit from the Child Support Grant, then more would be making claims than is in fact the case. The findings of this study do not suggest any significant positive association between the grant and the trend in teenage childbearing in South Africa during the past decade.     

小额信贷对农户福利影响的实证分析

本文利用某市184个样本农户数据,研究小额信贷对农户福利的影响。研究表明：同一收入水平的参贷农户福利明显高于未参贷农户福利;在参贷农户中,高收人农户所得福利明显较高;而农户的贷款额、贷款投入到生产经营的比例、参贷农户的还款期限是影响农户福利的主要因素。为提高农户的福利水平,信贷机构必须扩大小额信贷的覆盖面,兼顾公平和协调发展;农户应提高生产技能,优化资金使用方式。     

基于ESDA的上海市常住境外人口空间分析

随着上海市城市化的发展和上海国际化程度的不断加深,大量的境外人口被吸引到上海工作和居住。通过探索性空间分析,初步揭示了上海市常住境外人口的现状和空间分布特征。上海市常住境外人口比例比较低,将上海建成为世界城市还需要一定的过程,上海市常住境外人口已经形成了空间集聚性,在浦西形成以虹桥镇、虹桥街道、徐家汇街道为中心的常住境外人口热点集聚区域,在浦东形成以花木街道、张江镇、陆家嘴街道为中心常住境外人口热点集聚区域。常住境外人口集聚区的形成为上海吸引更多的国际人才,增强城市的国际联系和竞争力,加快国际化进程奠定了基础。     

促进我国居民消费模式转变的税收政策选择

扩大居民消费对我国经济增长的拉动作用,已成为"十二五"规划的一个重点。但是,目前我国在居民消费不足的同时,却又存在"高物质、高消耗、高排放"现象。为了促进经济发展方式的转变,实现可持续发展,充分发挥税收政策引导市场主体行为的作用就至关重要。因此,可以根据"低物资、低消耗、低排放"可持续消费模式的三元结构,提出了贯穿消费模式的生态、环保、节约各个环节,并集引导、调节、鼓励、惩罚于一体的税收政策体系建议,以促进我国可持续消费模式的建立。     

我国城镇老年人医疗福利状况分析与对策研究

本文基于现有文献研究的数据和观点对目前我国城镇老年人的医疗福利状况进行了归纳和分析,包括老年人的医保参保、医疗保障、医疗费用负担、支付能力情况等。在对这些现状进行梳理的基础上,本文指出了其中存在的问题,并提出了扩大医疗保险覆盖率、缩小地区差距、补助贫困老人、提高基层医疗机构利用率等一系列相关政策建议。     

当前江苏省居民消费现状、原因及对策

现阶段江苏省居民消费的现状和主要特征表现为:一是社会消费品零售总额保持快速增长;二是城乡消费水平差距进一步扩大;三是消费结构有所改善但消费倾向下降。本文在简要分析上述三个特征的基础上简要地分析了导致这些特征的原因并提出了相应的对策建议。     

ON THE ROLE OF CAPITAL GAINS IN SWEDISH INCOME INEQUALITY

Realized capital gains are typically disregarded in the study of income inequality. We show that in the case of Sweden this severely underestimates the actual increase in inequality and, in particular, top income shares during recent decades. Using micro panel data to average incomes over longer periods and re‐rank individuals according to income excluding capital gains, we show that capital gains indeed are a reoccurring addition to rather than a transitory component in top incomes. Doing the same for lower income groups, however, makes virtually no difference. We also try to find the roots of the recent surge in capital gains‐driven inequality in Sweden since the 1980s. While there are no evident changes in terms of who earns these gains (high wage earners vs. top capital income earners), the primary driver instead seems to be the drastic asset price increases on the post‐1980 deregulated financial markets.     

市场结构、环境税与福利效应分析

运用短期局部均衡分析方法研究完全竞争市场和垄断市场条件下环境税对社会福利的影响.结果显示:在完全竞争市场条件下,对企业征收环境税可以增进社会福利.而在垄断市场条件下,环境税的福利效应具有不确定性,这取决于垄断造成的扭曲程度.如果垄断造成的扭曲较小,环境税仍然可以提高社会福利.但无论是增进抑或降低社会福利,对垄断企业征收环境税都不可能实现最优化,因为环境税在矫正污染外部性的同时,垄断造成产量水平下降导致福利损失增加,所以只能追求一个次优的结果,次优环境税低于完全竞争条件下的标准环境税.