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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2020‒06‒22
eight papers chosen by |
| By: | Bertrand Garbinti (Centre de recherche de la Banque de France - Banque de France); Jonathan Goupille-Lebret (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon, LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science, PSE - Paris School of Economics); Thomas Piketty (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | This data appendix provides methodological details and complete data series for our paper "Income Inequality in France, 1900-2014: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (DINA)". It is supplemented by a set of data files and computer codes (GGP2017DINA.zip). |
| Keywords: | capital income,France,labor income,DINA,Distributional National Accounts,inequality,United States,World Inequality Lab |
| Date: | 2020–05–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-02658946&r=all |
| By: | Abel Brodeur (University of Ottawa and IZA); Andrew Clark (Paris School of Economics - CNRS and IZA); Sarah Fleche (Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, EHESS, Centrale Marseille, Aix-Marseille School of Economics); Nattavudh Powdthavee (Warwick Business School and IZA) |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends data to test whether the lockdowns implemented in Europe and America led to changes in well-being related topic search terms. Using differences-in-differences and a regression discontinuity design to evaluate the causal effects of lockdown, we find a substantial increase in the search intensity for boredom in Europe and the US. We also found a significant increase in searches for loneliness, worry and sadness, while searches for stress, suicide and divorce on the contrary fell. Our results suggest that people's mental health may have been severely affected by the lockdown. |
| Keywords: | Boredom, COVID-19, Loneliness, Well-being. |
| JEL: | I12 I31 J22 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ott:wpaper:2004e&r=all |
| By: | Richard V. Burkhauser (Cornell University); Nicolas Herault (University of Melbourne); Stephen P. Jenkins (London School of Economics); Roger Wilkins (University of Melbourne) |
| Abstract: | The share of women in the top 1\% of the UK's income distribution has been growing over the last two decades (as in several other countries). Our first contribution is to account for this secular change using regressions of the probability of being in the top 1\%, fitted separately for men and women, in order to contrast between the sexes the role of changes in characteristics and changes in returns to characteristics. We show that the rise of women in the top 1\% is primarily accounted for by their greater increases (relative to men) in the number of years spent in full-time education. Although most top income analysis uses tax return data, we derive our findings taking advantage of the much more extensive information about personal characteristics that is available in survey data. Our use of survey data requires justification given survey under-coverage of top incomes. Providing this justification is our second contribution. |
| Keywords: | Top 1%; top incomes; inequality; gender differences; survey under-coverage. |
| JEL: | D31 J16 C81 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2020-544&r=all |
| By: | Brañas-Garza, Pablo; Caldentey, Pedro; Espín, Antonio M.; Garcia, Teresa; Hernández, Ana |
| Abstract: | Children as young as 3-4 years are already concerned about inequality and declare that equality is a norm that should be followed1. From 3 to 8 years they develop a strong preference for equality, which is typically reflected in both “envy” and “compassion”2,3, that is, aversion to disadvantageous and advantageous inequality, respectively4. Further studies suggest that inequality aversion does not continue increasing after that age, but rather exhibit an inverse-U shape relation with age in childhood and adolescence, with a peak at 8 years old3,5. Since children are particularly sensitive to inequality at the age of 8, it is an open question how exposure to real economic inequality at this age modulates prosocial behavior in adult life. Here we link generosity in dictator game experiments conducted among Spanish university students (n>400) with existing macro-level data on income inequality within their region when they were children. The data show that individuals who were exposed to higher levels of inequality at the age of 8 are more generous in adult life. Interestingly, exposure at older ages has no impact on generosity. Our results extend previous findings on the development of egalitarianism by showing long-lasting effects of childhood inequality experience into adult life. If prosocial behaviour is (partly) developed as a reaction to an unequal environment then, in the future, inequality might be counteracted. |
| Keywords: | Income inequality, prosocial behavior, dictator game experiments, early exposure. |
| JEL: | D31 D64 I32 |
| Date: | 2020–05–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100683&r=all |
| By: | Baum, Christopher (Boston College, and DIW Berlin); Lööf, Hans (Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm); Stephan, Andreas (Jönköping University, and DIW Berlin); Zimmermann, Klaus F. (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University, and CEPR, GLO) |
| Abstract: | Refugee workers start low and adjust slowly to the wages of comparable natives. The innovative approach in this study using unique Swedish employeremployee data shows that the observed wage gap between established refugees and comparable natives is mainly caused by occupational sorting into cognitive and manual tasks. Within occupations, it can be largely explained by differences in work experience. The identification strategy relies on a control group of matched natives with the same characteristics as the refugees, using panel data for 2003–2013 to capture unobserved heterogeneity. |
| Keywords: | refugees, wage earnings gap, Blinder - Oaxaca decomposition, employer - employee data, coarsened exact matching, correlated random effects model |
| JEL: | C23 F22 J24 J6 O15 |
| Date: | 2020–05–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2020023&r=all |
| By: | Amaia Palencia-Esteban (Universidade de Vigo); Coral del RiÌ o (Universidade de Vigo) |
| Abstract: | The concentration of different social groups in certain occupations creates and perpetuates inequalities inside and outside the labor market. This paper quantifies the economic and well-being consequences of occupational segregation by gender and migration status in 12 European countries. The effects are negative for most foreign workers, especially for women, who always derive larger welfare losses than men. In general, these losses are remarkably high in southeast Europe and smaller in the northwest, whereas immigrant men derive very small gains in Portugal and the UK. Female natives are also deprived in most countries. However, immigrants’ characteristics, particularly education, explain a significant part of these geographical disparities. In fact, while the UK is in a somewhat better position thanks to its immigrants' higher educational levels, the counterfactual analysis reinforces Portugal's good position, reflecting higher levels of labor market integration among its immigrant population. |
| Keywords: | Occupational segregation, welfare, gender, immigration, Europe. |
| JEL: | D63 F22 J10 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2020-533&r=all |
| By: | Kai Barron (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin); Heike Harmgart (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, UK, and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin); Steffen Huck (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin); Sebastian Schneider (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn); Matthias Sutter (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn) |
| Abstract: | We measure the prevalence of discrimination between Jordanian host and Syrian refugee children attending school in Jordan. Using a simple sharing experiment, we find only little discrimination. Among the Jordanian children, however, we see that those who descended from Palestinian refugees do not discriminate at all, suggesting that a family history of refugee status can generate solidarity with new refugees. We also find that parents’ narratives about the refugee crisis are correlated with the degree of discrimination, suggesting that discriminatory preferences are being transmitted through parental attitudes |
| Keywords: | Discrimination, refugees, children, experiment, integration |
| JEL: | C91 D90 J15 C93 J13 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2020_13&r=all |
| By: | Rafael Carranza (London School of Economics); Gabriel Otero (Utrecht University); Dante Contreras (Universidad de Chile) |
| Abstract: | We explore how different spatial compositions affect the educational achievement in mathematics of 16 year-old students in Chile, a Latin American country with high income inequality and school segregation. We develop a critical review on the literature on negative "neighbourhood effects" associated with concentrated poverty, complementing it with studies concerning self-segregation preferences by members of the upper-middle class. We combine administrative data about student performance with survey data for the 52 municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile. We cluster the districts based on factors such as unemployment, economic inequality, access to services, experiences of violence and stigmatization. Using longitudinal data, we look at the effect of each of the six spatial clusters on academic performance. Spatial clusters report a significant effect, above and beyond that of individual, household, and school-level characteristics. We conclude that space complements and reinforces the processes of accumulation of socioeconomic (dis)advantages. |
| Keywords: | Class; Education; Inequality; Socio-economic environment; Urban studies. |
| JEL: | D63 I24 R23 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2020-543&r=all |