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Social Policies and Distributional Outcomes Research Paper
Flat-lining or seething beneath the surface? Two decades of changing economic inequality in the UK

Polina Obolenskaya and John Hills

This paper analyses what happened to economic inequalities in the United Kingdom in the two decades from 1995-96. In aggregate, inequality changes were unremarkable, especially by comparison with sharp increases in the ...Read more...

2 July 2019

CASEpaper
Inequality and the Capability Approach

Tania Burchardt and Rod Hick

Inequality has acquired a newfound prominence in academic and political debate. While scholars working with the capability approach have succeeded in influencing the nature of debate about the conceptualisation and measu...Read more...

13 January 2017

CASEpaper
Pareto and the upper tail of the income distribution in the UK: 1799 to the present

Anthony B. Atkinson

The Pareto distribution has long been a source of fascination to economists, and the Pareto coefficient is widely used, in theoretical and empirical studies, as a summary of the degree of concentration of top incomes. Th...Read more...

17 October 2016

Public Economics Programme Discussion Paper
Pareto models, top incomes, and recent trends in UK income inequality

Stephen P Jenkins

I determine UK income inequality levels and trends by combining inequality estimates from tax return data (for the ‘rich’) and household survey data (for the ‘non-rich’), taking advantage of the better coverage of top i...Read more...

18 August 2016

CASEpaper
The changing distribution of individual incomes in the UK before and after the recession

Eleni Karagiannaki and Lucinda Platt

While there has been substantial research on the impacts of the Great Recession on household incomes, there has been less attention paid to the effects on individual income. Using pooled data from the Family Resources Su...Read more...

30 September 2015

SPCC Working Paper
Were we really all in it together? The distributional effects of the 2010-2015 UK Coalition government's tax-benefit policy changes: an end-of-term update

Paola De Agostini, John Hills and Holly Sutherland

This paper examines the distributional impacts of the changes to benefits, tax credits, pensions and direct taxes between the UK Elections in May 2010 and in May 2015. It also looks ahead to the longer-term effects of ch...Read more...

1 September 2015

CASEpaper
The income distribution in the UK: A picture of advantage and disadvantage

Stephen P Jenkins

This paper describes the UK income distribution and how it has evolved over the last 50 years. It also includes some comparisons with the income distributions of other rich countries. Multiple perspectives on the distrib...Read more...

18 February 2015

CASEpaper
Piketty in the long run

Frank A Cowell

I examine the idea of 'the long run' in Piketty (2014) and related works. In contrast to simplistic interpretations of long-run models of income- and wealth-distribution Piketty (2014) draws on a rich economic analysis t...Read more...

17 February 2015

SPCC Working Paper
The Coalition's Record on Cash Transfers, Poverty and Inequality 2010-2015

John Hills

Presenting his 2010 spending review, George Osborne, the Chancellor, insisted that 'those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden'. How did the Coalition's benefit and direct tax policies affect the d...Read more...

26 January 2015

SPCC Research Report
The Coalition's Social Policy Record: Policy Spending and Outcomes 2010-2015

Ruth Lupton, Tania Burchardt, Amanda Fitzgerald, John Hills, Abigail McKnight, Polina Obolenskaya, Kitty Stewart, Stephanie Thomson, Rebecca Tunstall and Polly Vizard

This paper summarises nine detailed reports assessing the social policies of the UK Coalition government elected in 2010. What did the Coalition set out to achieve? How much was spent and saved? What policies were enacte...Read more...

26 January 2015

Economics of Industry Paper
Multiproduct Firms, Income Distribution, and Trade

Marcia M Schafgans and Joachim Stibora

We develop a general equilibrium model of multiproduct fi…rms with quality differentiated goods. Households are characterized by an heterogeneous taste for the differentiated good and their income level. The use of non-h...Read more...

1 July 2014

SPCC Working Paper
Labour's Record on Cash Transfers, Poverty, Inequality and the Lifecycle 1997 - 2010

John Hills

Cash transfers (benefits and tax credits) are crucial to the way that inequalities develop over time. This paper looks at how Labour’s aims, policies and achievements on poverty and inequality related to its reforms of a...Read more...

1 July 2013

SPCC Research Report
Labour's Social Policy Record: Policy, Spending and Outcomes 1997-2010

Ruth Lupton, John Hills, Kitty Stewart and Polly Vizard

This is the first major report in a wider programme assessing the impact of the recession, government policy reforms and public spending on poverty and inequality in the UK. Later work will assess the Coalition’s social ...Read more...

29 June 2013

Public Economics Programme Discussion Paper
Mobility in China

Yi Chen and Frank A Cowell

We examine the evidence on rank and income mobility in China during the decades immediately preceding and immediately following the millennium using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. We show that ran...Read more...

13 May 2013

CASEpaper
The distribution of total greenhouse gas emissions by households in the UK, and some implications for social policy

Ian Gough, Saamah Abdallah, Victoria Johnson, Josh Ryan-Collins and Cindy Smith

This paper maps the distribution of total direct and embodied emissions of greenhouse gases by households in the UK and goes on to analyse their main drivers. Previous research has studied the distribution of direct emis...Read more...

1 July 2011

Public Economics Programme Discussion Paper
The Tyranny Puzzle in Welfare Economics: An empirical investigation

Frank A Cowell, Marc Fleurbaey and Bertil Tungodden

We address a puzzle in welfare economics – the possibility that rational people may be simultaneously against two apparently con‡icting forms of “tyranny.” In fact the two types of tyranny can be reconciled but at the po...Read more...

May 2010

Development Discussion Paper
The Reversal of Fortune Thesis Reconsidered

Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay and Elliott Green

Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson (2002) have claimed that the world income distribution underwent a 'Reversal of Fortune' from 1500 to the present, whereby formerly rich countries in what is now the developing world became ...Read more...

April 2010

CASEreport
An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK - Report of the National Equality Panel

John Hills

Britain is an unequal country, more so than many other industrial countries and more so than a generation ago. This is manifest in many ways - most obviously in the gap between those who are well off and those who are le...Read more...

January 2010

DARP Paper
Goodness-of-Fit: An Economic Approach

Frank A Cowell, Emmanuel Flachaire and Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay

Specific functional forms are often used in economic models of distributions; goodness-of-fit measures are used to assess whether a functional form is appropriate in the light of real-world data. Standard approaches use ...Read more...

April 2009

DARP Paper
On the Measurement of Polarisation: A questionnaire study

Yoram Amiel, Frank A Cowell and Xavier Ramos

Starting from the axiomatisation of polarisation contained in Esteban and Ray (1994) and Chakravarty and Majumdar (2001) we investigate whether people’s perceptions of income polarisation is consistent with the key axiom...Read more...

March 2007

CASEpaper
Tibor Barna: The redistributive impact of taxes and social policies in the UK: 1937-2005

Howard Glennerster

Regular annual studies made by the Office of National Statistics in the UK are intended to show how far taxing household incomes and giving benefits in cash and kind to households redistributes income from rich to poor. ...Read more...

December 2006

Political Economy and Public Policy Paper
The Effect of Direct Democracy on Income Redistribution: Evidence for Switzerland

Lars P. Feld, Justina A.V. Fischer and Gebhard Kirchgässner

There is an intensive dispute in political economics about the impact of institutions on income redistribution. While the main focus is on comparison between different forms of representative democracy, the influence of ...Read more...

October 2006

DARP Paper
Static and Dynamic Poverty in Spain, 1993-2000,(published in Hacienda Pública, no 179 (2007), pp. 51-77)

Elena Bárcena-Martín and Frank A Cowell

We focus on the statics and dynamics of poverty in Spain using data from the first eight waves of the European Community Household Panel from 1994 to 2001, a period not sufficiently covered by recent literature. The resu...Read more...

January 2006

CASEpaper
Comparing incomes when needs differ: Equivalisation for the extra costs of disability in the UK

Asghar Zaidi and Tania Burchardt

Equivalisation of incomes for household size and composition is accepted practice when measuring poverty and inequality; adjustments to take account of other variations in needs are rarely made. This paper explores the f...Read more...

February 2003

Development Economics Paper
The Rise of Mass Consumption Societies

Kiminori Matsuyama

This paper develops a model to understand mechanisms behind the rise of mass consumption societies. The development process depicted in the model follows the Flying Geese pattern, in which a series of industries takes of...Read more...

November 2000

DARP Paper
Decomposing Inequality in Greece: Results and Policy Implications

Christos Papatheodorou

This paper investigates the extent to which certain social characteristics and personal attributes could help explain income inequality in Greece. This analysis is quite revealing for understanding and explaining income ...Read more...

November 2000

CASEpaper
Low Inequality with Low Redistribution? An analysis of income distribution in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan compared to Britain

Didier Jacobs

This article is a comparative analysis of the sources of income inequality in four countries, namely Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. It relies upon decompositions of inequality measures by population g...Read more...

January 2000

DARP Paper
Statistical Inference for Welfare under Complete and Incomplete Information, (published in Journal of Economic Inequality, vol. 1 (2003), pp. 191-219)

Frank A Cowell and Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser

We show how a collection of results in the literature on the empirical estimation of welfare indicators from sample data can be unified. We also demonstrate how some of these ideas can be extended to empirically importan...Read more...

December 1999

DARP Paper
Choices in Egalitarian Distribution: Inequality Aversion versus Risk Aversion

Leima Davidovitz and Yoram Kroll

Inequality aversion and risk aversion are widely assumed features of economic models. But a review of the literature revealed that inequlity aversion and risk aversion are treated as separate variables. This paper presen...Read more...

March 1999

CASEpaper
Social Exclusion, Social Isolation and the Distribution of Income

Brian Barry

Social exclusion can be distinguished from social isolation, defining social isolation as the phenomenon of non-participation (of an individual or group) in a society's mainstream institutions, while reserving 'social ex...Read more...

August 1998

DARP Paper
Measurement of Inequality (published in Handbook of Income Distribution, A B Atkinson and F Bourguignon (eds), 2000)

Frank A Cowell

The analysis of inequality is placed in the context of recent developments in economics and statistics. Prepated for Handbook of Income Distribution, edited by A B Atkinson and F Bourguignon....Read more...

July 1998

DARP Paper
Inequality in Greece: An Analysis by Income Source

Christos Papatheodorou

This paper employs a decomposition analysis of inequality by income source to understand and explain particular aspects of income inequality in Greece. The results suggest that entrepreneurial income is the most signific...Read more...

July 1998

CASEpaper
Social Welfare Systems in East Asia: A Comparative Analysis including Private Welfare

Didier Jacobs

This paper is an overview of the social welfare systems of five East Asian countries, namely Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. It analyses the overall costs of welfare as well as income distribution aspects,...Read more...

July 1998

DARP Paper
Growing Apart: Inequality and Poverty Trends in Brazil in the 1980s

Francisco H.G. Ferreira and Julie Litchfield

This paper analyses the evolution of inequality and poverty in Brazil during the 1980s, using a large repeated cross-section household survey data set. We calculate standard scalar measures of inequality and poverty, tog...Read more...

August 1996

DARP Paper
Modelling Income Distribution in Spain: A Robust Parametric Approach

Mercedes Prieto Alaiz and Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser

This paper presents a robust estimation of two income distribution models using Spanish data for the period 1990-91 under three different concepts of income. The effect on the estimates of the Theil index due to the choi...Read more...

June 1996

DARP Paper
Choosing Between Two Income Distribution Models with Contaminated Data, (revised version published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Serie B, 15 (1997), pp. 715-727)

Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser

Choosing between two income distribution models typically involves testing two non-tested hypotheses, that is hypotheses such that one cannot be obtained as a special or limiting case of the other. Cox (1961, 1962) propo...Read more...

March 1996

DARP Paper
Family Instability, Family Incomes and Inequality

Frank A Cowell

When families reform there are implications for the income distribution through a number of economic mechanisms: income sharing, changes in household need, reweighting the distribution. These changes are distinct from th...Read more...

March 1996

DARP Paper
Income Distribution and Inequality in Germany: Evidence from Panel Data

Christian Schluter

Non-parametric kernel density estimates are employed for an exploratory analysis of the distributional conseuqnces of the German tax-benefit system using GSOEP. The focuses is on the year 1991 and a detailed analysis is ...Read more...

March 1996

DARP Paper
Income Distribution in Brazil 1981-1990: Parametric and Non-Parametric Approaches

Frank A Cowell, Francisco H.G. Ferreira and Julie Litchfield

Using a newly available comprehensive micro-data set we examine changes in the shape of the Brazilian income distribution during the 'lost decade' of the 1980s. We adopt alternative parametric and non-parametric approach...Read more...

March 1996

DARP Paper
Public Pension Reform, Demographics ,and Inequality

Robert K von Weizsäcker

Starting from a simple, descriptive model of individual income, an explicit link between the age composition of a population and the personal distribution of incomes is established. Demographic effects on income inequali...Read more...

June 1995

Econometrics Paper
Convergence Empirics Across Economies with (Some)Capital Mobility (Now published in Journal of Economic Growth, vol.1, No.1 ( March 1996),pp.95-124.)

Danny Quah

This paper reinterprets a simple model of growth and fluctuations across many economies to allow explicitly characterizing the dynamically evolving corss-economy distribution of income. Such a framework provides a more n...Read more...

1994

DARP Paper
Robust estimation of personal income distribution models, (revised version published in The Canadian Journal of Statistics 22 (1994), pp. 247—258)

Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser

Statistical problems in modelling personal income distributions include estimation procedures, testing and model choice. Typically, the parameters of a given model are estimated by classical procedures such as maximum li...Read more...

October 1993

DARP Paper
Why not to aggregate up: the influence of aggregation on the ordering of distributions

Stephen Howes

Researchers in many fields of economics often compare distributions using some criterion or another of inequality, poverty or welfare. It is standard practice to base such comparative analysis on aggregated data. But wil...Read more...

October 1993