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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2024‒04‒15
six papers chosen by |
| By: | Lustig, Nora; Martinez Pabon, Valentina; Pessino, Carola |
| Abstract: | This paper uses standard fiscal incidence analysis to study how much income redistribution and poverty reduction are accomplished through the fiscal system in eighteen Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. We show there is considerable heterogeneity in the income inequality and poverty-reducing power of LAC fiscal systems. While all LAC fiscal systems reduce income inequality, fiscal systems in nine LAC countries are poverty-increasing, and this startling characteristic has not improved over time. When analyzing specific fiscal elements, we find that direct taxes, direct transfers, and in-kind transfers are all equalizing, and spending on education and health is often pro-poor. Moreover, contrary to expectations, indirect taxes and subsidies are more frequently equalizing than unequalizing. |
| Keywords: | Fiscal policy;Inequality;Poverty;Latin America |
| JEL: | D31 D6 E62 H22 I32 |
| Date: | 2023–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:13193&r=ltv |
| By: | Brunori, Paolo; Ferreira, Francisco H. G.; Neidhöfer, Guido |
| Abstract: | How strong is the transmission of socio-economic status across generations in Latin America? To answer this question, we first review the empirical literature on intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity for the region, summarizing results for both income and educational outcomes. We find that, whereas the income mobility literature is hampered by a paucity of representative datasets containing linked information on parents and children, the inequality of opportunity approach which relies on other inherited and pre-determined circumstance variables has suffered from arbitrariness in the choice of population partitions. Two new data-driven approaches one aligned with the ex-ante and the other with the ex-post conception of inequality of opportunity are introduced to address this shortcoming. They yield a set of new inequality of opportunity estimates for twenty-seven surveys covering nine Latin American countries over various years between 2000 and 2015. In most cases, more than half of the current generations inequality is inherited from the past with a range between 44% and 63%. We argue that on balance, given the parsimony of the population partitions, these are still likely to be underestimates. |
| Keywords: | Equality of Opportunity;Intergenerational mobility;Latin America |
| JEL: | D31 I39 J62 O15 |
| Date: | 2023–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:13155&r=ltv |
| By: | Breitkopf, Laura (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods); Chowdhury, Shyamal (University of Sydney); Priyam, Shambhavi (World Bank); Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf); Sutter, Matthias (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) |
| Abstract: | We use novel data on nearly 6, 000 children and adolescents aged 6 to 16 that combine incentivized measures of social, time, and risk preferences with rich information on child behavior and family environment to study whether children's economic preferences predict their behavior. Results from standard regression specifications demonstrate the predictive power of children's preferences for their prosociality, educational achievement, risky behaviors, emotional health, and behavioral problems. In a second step, we add information on a family's socio-economic status, family structure, religion, parental preferences and IQ, and parenting style to capture household environment. As a result, the predictive power of preferences for behavior attenuates. We discuss implications of our findings for research on the formation of children's preferences and behavior. |
| Keywords: | social preferences, time preferences, risk preferences, experiments with children, origins of preferences, human capital, behavior |
| JEL: | C91 D01 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16834&r=ltv |
| By: | Miriam Gensowski (Rockwool Foundation, CEBI (U. of Copenhagen), and IZA); Mette Goertz (University of Copenhagen, Dep. of Economics and CEBI and IZA) |
| Abstract: | Is the education-health gradient inflated because both education and health are associated with unobserved socio-emotional skills? Revisiting the literature, we find that the gradient is reduced by 30-45% by fine-grained personality facets and Locus of Control. Traditional aggregated Big-Five scales, in contrast, have a much smaller and mostly insignificant contribution to the gradient. We decompose the gradient into its components with an order-invariant method, and use sibling-fixed effects to address that much of the observed education-health gradient reflects associations rather than causal relationships. There are education-health gradients even within sibling pairs; personality facets reduce these gradients by 30% or more. Our analyses use an extraordinarily large survey (N=28, 261) linked to high-quality administrative registers with information on SES background and objective health outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Inequality; Health-Education Gradient; Personality; Big Five-2 Inventory; Sibling Fixed Effects. |
| JEL: | I14 I12 I24 I31 |
| Date: | 2023–08–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kucebi:2304&r=ltv |
| By: | Heikkuri, Suvi (Unit for Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | This paper documents the changing skill composition during industrialization in Sweden using population censuses and HISCO/HISCLASS scheme. The results reveal a general shift from unskilled to more-skilled occupations, though the trend differs by gender and sector. First, the skill upgrading was more pronounced for women, who left agriculture for better job opportunities elsewhere. Second, within manufacturing, there was a shift from medium-skilled to low- and unskilled occupations, consistent with the workshop-to-factory shift. However, this trend is mirrored by skill upgrading within services, where the expansion of trade and transport introduced new more-skilled jobs. Finally, I show that skill distribution in Sweden exhibited similar trends to the United States, though with greater deskilling and slower increase in white-collar employment. |
| Keywords: | Industrialization; Technological change; Structural change; Occupational structure; Skills; Sweden |
| JEL: | J21 J22 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2024–03–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunhis:0039&r=ltv |
| By: | Guizzo Altube, Matías; Scartascini, Carlos; Tommasi, Mariano |
| Abstract: | Predominant views on the political economy of Latin America and the Caribbean tend to emphasize that elite domination helps to understand the high levels of inequality. The contemporary fiscal version of that assertion goes something like “the rich are powerful and they dont like taxes, hence we have little taxation and little redistribution.” That is a good approximation to the reality of some countries, but not of others. There are cases in the region where there are high levels of taxation and non-negligible redistributive efforts. But in some of those cases such redistribution comes hand in hand with macroeconomic imbalances, high inflation, low growth, as well as low-quality public policies. When redistributive efforts are short-sighted and attempted with inefficient public policies, fiscal imbalances lead to inflation and to frequent macroeconomic crises that reduce growth and thwart poverty reduction efforts. The argument of this paper is that there are various possible political configurations (including elite domination and populism among others) that lead to different economic and social outcomes (including the degree of redistribution and others). We postulate that each configuration of social outcomes emerges out of different political economy equilibria. Different countries in the region will be in different political economy equilibria, and hence will have different combinations of political economy syndromes and of socioeconomic outcomes. In this paper, we characterize the countries regarding the size of the public sector, how much fiscal redistribution there is, and how efficient this public action is. We summarize various strands of literature that attempt to explain some elements of that fiscal vector one at a time; and then attempt to provide a simple framework that might explain why different countries present different configurations of size, distributiveness, and efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Inequality;redistribution;political economy;growth;Poverty |
| JEL: | H20 H23 E62 P16 |
| Date: | 2023–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:13194&r=ltv |