We characterize axiomatically a new index of urban poverty that i) captures aspects of the incidence and distribution of poverty across neighborhoods of a city, ii) is related to the Gini index and iii) is consistent with empirical evidence that living in a high poverty neighborhood is detrimental for many dimensions of residents’ well-being. Widely … Read more
Urban poverty: Measurement theory and evidence from American cities
Income Inequality and Mortality: A Norwegian Perspective
This paper uses Norwegian register data to examine the story behind income growth and people living longer in Norway over the last 70 years at both a municipal and individual level. It finds that the large gap in infant deaths between poorer and richer parts of the country largely closed in the late 1960s. However … Read more
Wages, experience, and training of women over the life cycle
This paper finds that on-the-job training can help mitigate some of the negative career effects of having children, especially for women who left education at the end of high school. The researchers used data from 18 waves of the British Household Panel Survey between 1991 and 2008, which contains information on the employment, education, training … Read more
Lower and upper bound estimates of inequality of opportunity for emerging economies
This paper demonstrates that internationally-accepted measures used to assess equality of opportunity tend to underestimate the level of inequality in emerging economies. The authors studied countries where longitudinal panel studies were available; comparing their results with others obtained through standard measures using official data. This allowed a comparison of income and consumption data for 12 … Read more
Socioeconomic Background and Gene–Environment Interplay in Social Stratification across the Early Life Course
This study finds that genetic inheritance has more influence than the shared social environment alone in perpetuating social inequalities. However, the importance of genes varies according family environment: genetic influences are stronger among those growing up in the most advantaged families. The researchers studied 6,500 pairs of twins born in Finland between 1975 and 1986. They used … Read more
The Intergenerational Elasticity of Earnings: Exploring the Mechanisms
Rich parents have rich children. Why is that? This paper evaluates several different potential channels that might explain the persistence in earnings between parents and children. In particular, the researchers study the relative importance of differences in years of schooling, cognitive skills, parental investments, and family background. To do so, they use a cohort born … Read more
Economic Distress and Support for Radical Right Parties—Evidence From Sweden
This paper investigates whether there are any links between being made unemployed and increasing support for radical right-wing political parties. The research uses Swedish election data to show that for every layoff notice among low-skilled native-born workers, support for the country’s radical right party the Sweden Democrats increases by, on average, 0.17 to 0.45 votes. … Read more
Facts and Myths in the Popular Debate about Inequality in Sweden
This paper presents a critical assessment of the public debate on income and wealth inequality in Sweden. The authors scrutinize ten often-heard claims in the debate by contrasting them against facts in available databases and results in the research literature. The paper also addresses specific measurement problems in the Swedish income statistics and suggests possible … Read more
Lives on track? Long‐term earnings returns to selective school placement in England and Denmark
This paper looks how selective schooling affected the lifetime earnings of people born in the 1950s, and finds it did little to improve earnings or to increase social mobility in England. The researchers used data from the National Child Development Study on 15,000 people born in England and Wales in a single week in March … Read more
Family size and economic wellbeing following divorce: The United States in comparative perspective
Do childless women fare better economically than mothers after divorce? And do mothers with many children suffer more than those with small families? This study compares data from a panel study in the United States with similar information from studies in Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia. It finds that the household incomes of women … Read more