Title: Income Inequality and Poverty Empirics: New Tools and Perspectives
Abstract: Economists, philosophers and public policy analysts have been concerned with income inequality issues for a century. In the beginning the attention this topic garnered was small, although a steady stream of interest was maintained. Beginning in the middle of the 1980's, a shift in interest occurred, and a large number of economists began writing about issues involving the size distribution of income and poverty.1 The magnitude of the writing became significant and continues unabated. As a consequence, so many articles have appeared on the subject in the last ten years that several survey pieces were needed to review and assess the state of the research. New journals have been launched dealing solely with income inequality. One might ask, what caused this sudden ubiquitous interest in questions of income distribution? One possible explanation is that a perceived increase in the level of income inequality over the past two decades has taken place. Bishop, Formby and Smith (1991) used statistical Lorenz curves to argue that inequality increased for most of the 1970s and 1980s and unambiguously did so from 1978 to 1982. The apparent trend towards increased income inequality continued into the 1990s and the Gini coefficient for family income for 1993 as reported by the U.S. government was at the highest level in 25 years. It has now leveled off.
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 11
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