Deals with income distribution methods and their economic applications.

Income inequality is rising. A quarter of a century ago, the average disposable income of the richest 10% in OECD countries was around seven times higher than that of the poorest 10%; today, it's around 9½ times higher. Why does this matter? Many fear this widening gap is hurting individuals, societies and even economies. This book explores income inequality across five main headings. It starts by explaining some key terms in the inequality debate. It then examines recent trends and explains why income inequality varies between countries. Next it looks at why income gaps are growing and, in particular, at the rise of the 1%. It then looks at the consequences, including research that suggests widening inequality could hurt economic growth. Finally, it examines policies for addressing inequality and making economies more inclusive.

The process of globalization has implications for human rights, though the relationship between the two is not always clear. How does globalization effect human rights in local contexts? Globalization, Poverty, and Income Inequality examines the relationships between globalization and trade liberalization, and poverty and income inequality, using Indonesia as a case study. This empirically rigorous investigation finds that although increased trade tends to reduce poverty, there are exceptions. For example, globalization via trade in certified organic coffee has not helped low-income farmers. And globalized access to treatments for visual problems has been countermanded by rising digitization that negatively affects the visually disabled poor. Ultimately, the chapters describe an ambiguous relationship between trade liberalization and inequality, both of which can increase or decrease in proportion to one another depending on region and sector. This empirically driven work provides a nuanced view of the trade-poverty relationship, contributing balanced testimony to policy debates being held internationally.

This report provides evidence of a fairly generalised increase in income inequality over the past two decades across OECD countries, but the timing, intensity and causes of the increase differ from what is typically suggested in the media.

Issues concerning economic inequality and poverty have become increasingly central to public debate over the past fifty years. The literature on measuring economic inequality and poverty has vastly expanded, developing many new methods, but also has generated many controversies. Economic Inequality and Poverty provides a systematic treatment of the development of inequality and poverty, focusing on how income inequality and poverty measurements have evolved in recent decades, and shows how to resolve some of the methodological and factual conflicts that have arisen. The book's primary focus is on the analysis of the relationships between individuals' or households' distributions of economic variables. These relationships are crucial in understanding many economic phenomena. Kakwani and Son employ household surveys to illustrate the application of their framework, showing how it can help in drawing evidence-based policy conclusions.

This is a collection of essays from leading public intellectuals that identifies major conceptual problems in the analysis of poverty and inequality and advances strategies for reducing poverty and inequality that are consistent with these new conceptual and methodological approaches.

This title was first published in 1991: This collection focuses on the concepts and measurements of inequality, poverty, the concentration of wealth, and the implications of these issues for social policies. A special feature of this work is the international comparisons of the evidence on economic inequality.

This paper demonstrates that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty by reducing economic growth, the progressivity of the tax system, the level and effectiveness of social spending, and the formation of human capital, and by perpetuating an unequal distribution of asset ownership and unequal access to education. These findings hold for countries with different growth experiences, at different stages of development, and using various indices of corruption. An important implication of these results is that policies that reduce corruption will also lower income inequality and poverty.

Leading scholars examine the conflicting paradigms of affluence and destitution in the United States—as well as other free societies—and discuss the influence of education, race, and status on economic mobility. While recent catastrophic events in New Orleans and Haiti may have magnified issues of social inequity, leaders have debated over poverty and discrimination for decades. Are the poor disadvantaged by the institutions of society or by the choices they make? Through two insightful volumes, the author examines differing academic and political perspectives to help shed light on the causes of poverty and inequality; the role that gender, race, age, or sexual preference plays in determining opportunity; and the effectiveness of current social and economic policies in balancing the inequity among disparate groups. The Economics of Inequality, Poverty, and Discrimination in the 21st Century consists of 2 volumes containing 32 papers divided into 5 categories: measurement, inequality and mobility, institutions and choices, demographic groups and discrimination, and policy. The papers—written by economists, sociologists, philosophers and lawyers—deal with the extent of inequality in the United States and how it compares to other countries, and the newly emerging evidence on the relationship between inequality and mobility within a society.