We investigate whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997), with negative results. We then investigate the evolution of income inequality over the same period and its correlation with growth. The dominating feature is inequality convergence across countries. This convergence has been significantly faster amongst developed countries. Growth does not appear to influence the evolution of inequality over time. Outline

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/81822/1/02-28.pdf

Economic growth and income inequality

Objective. Cross-national research on the causes and consequences of income inequality has been hindered by the limitations of existing inequality data sets: greater coverage across countries and over time is available from these sources only at the cost of significantly reduced comparability across observations. The goal of the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) is to overcome these limitations.

Methods. A custom missing-data algorithm was used to standardize the U.N. University's World Income Inequality Database; data collected by the Luxembourg Income Study served as the standard.

Results. The SWIID provides comparable Gini indices of gross and net income inequality for 153 countries for as many years as possible from 1960 to the present, along with estimates of uncertainty in these statistics.

Conclusions. By maximizing comparability for the largest possible sample of countries and years, the SWIID is better suited to broad cross-national research on income inequality than previously available sources.

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Standardizing the World Income Inequality Database

Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States

A new focus within both social epidemiology and political sociology investigates how political systems and priorities shape health inequities. To advance-and better integrate-research on political determinants of health inequities, the authors conducted a systematic search of the ISI Web of Knowledge and PubMed databases and identified 45 studies, commencing in 1992, that explicitly and empirically tested, in relation to an a priori political hypothesis, for either 1) changes in the magnitude of health inequities or 2) significant cross-national differences in the magnitude of health inequities. Overall, 84% of the studies focused on the global North, and all clustered around 4 political factors: 1) the transition to a capitalist economy; 2) neoliberal restructuring; 3) welfare states; and 4) political incorporation of subordinated racial/ethnic, indigenous, and gender groups. The evidence suggested that the first 2 factors probably increase health inequities, the third is inconsistently related, and the fourth helps reduce them. In this review, the authors critically summarize these studies' findings, consider methodological limitations, and propose a research agenda-with careful attention to spatiotemporal scale, level, time frame (e.g., life course, historical generation), choice of health outcomes, inclusion of polities, and specification of political mechanisms-to address the enormous gaps in knowledge that were identified.

/pdf/epi-demos-cracy-linking-political-systems-and-priorities-to-5gup3kp2mi.pdf

Epi + demos + cracy: Linking Political Systems and Priorities to the Magnitude of Health Inequities—Evidence, Gaps, and a Research Agenda

We examine the determinants of social expenditure in an unbalanced pooled time-series analysis for 18 Latin American countries for the period 1970 to 2000. This is the first such analysis of spending in Latin American countries with a full complement of regime, partisanship, state structure, economic, and demographic variables, making our analysis comparable to analyses of welfare states in advanced industrial countries. Democracy matters in the long run both for social security and welfare and for health and education spending, and—in stark contrast to OECD countries—partisanship does not matter. Highly repressive authoritarian regimes retrench spending on health and education, but not on social security.

/pdf/politics-and-social-spending-in-latin-america-3d7jj58ni9.pdf

Politics and Social Spending in Latin America

This article presents the first pooled time series analysis of the impact that politics and policy have on inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. The authors build on models consisting of sociological and economic variables, adding the strength of the democratic tradition, long-term legislative partisan political power distribution, and social spending to explain variation in inequality. They analyze an unbalanced pooled time series data set for income distribution in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1970 to 2000. They show that the political variables add explanatory power. A strong record of democracy and a left-leaning legislative partisan balance are associated with lower levels of inequality, as are social security and welfare spending under democratic regimes. Thus, they replicate some and modify other well-established findings from studies of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the very different context of Latin America and the Caribbean....

Politics and Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

This article presents the first pooled time series analysis of the impact that politics and policy have on inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. The authors build on models consisting of sociological and economic variables, adding the strength of the democratic tradition, long-term legislative partisan political power distribution, and social spending to explain variation in inequality. They analyze an unbalanced pooled time series data set for income distribution in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1970 to 2000. They show that the political variables add explanatory power. A strong record of democracy and a left-leaning legislative partisan balance are associated with lower levels of inequality, as are social security and welfare spending under democratic regimes. Thus, they replicate some and modify other well-established findings from studies of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the very different context of Latin America and the Caribbean. They confirm that the partisan composition of government matters, and show that, in contrast to OECD countries, where social security and welfare spending consistently reduce inequality, such spending reduces inequality only in a democratic context in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Jenny Pribble

Papers

Politics and Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

Politics a and I Inequality iin Latin A America a and tthe C Caribbean