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

The present report is submitted in response to General Assembly resolution 61/106, by which the Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Optional Protocol thereto. As requested by the Assembly, a brief overview of the status of the Convention as at 3 August 2007 is presented. The report also contains a brief description of technical arrangements on staff and facilities made necessary for the effective performance of the functions of the Conference of States Parties and the Committee under the Convention and the Optional Protocol, and a description on the progressive implementation of standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services of the United Nations system. Recent efforts of the United Nations and agencies to disseminate information on the Convention and the Optional Protocol are also described.

わかりやすい障害者の権利条約 : 知的障害のある人の権利のために = Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities

The third way: the renewal of social democracy

Será que a desigualdade de rendimentos aumentou durante os últimos tempos? Quem ganhou e quem perdeu neste processo? Este processo afectou todos os países da OCDE uniformemente? Em que medida é que maiores desigualdades de rendimentos são a consequência de maiores diferenças nos rendimentos dos trabalhadores e até que ponto são afectados por outros factores? Finalmente, como é que a redistribuição governamental através do sistema de benefícios fiscais afecta estas tendências?

Book Review: OECD, Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries:

Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment. Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2003. 392 pp. ISBN 0-87154-356-7. $39.95 (cloth). This book begins with the phrase "imagine a world," which aptly describes the authors' aim. The "world" that Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers imagine is a "dual-earner-dual-carer" U.S. society, a "fully gender-egalitarian, economically secure, caring society" (p. 4). They acknowledge the enormous magnitude of transformation that would be required for such an end vision to be achieved, but point out that without a clear end vision, such a transformation would be impossible. Gornick and Meyers propose that a dual-earner-dual-carer society can be achieved through three key changes: 1) Shifting several hours per week of men's time from paid work to care for children, and a smaller number of women's hours from home to paid work 2) Creating new employment arrangements to allow men and women to take time for parenting without excessive financial or advancement penalties in the workplace 3) Reducing standard working hours and expanding paid family leave and public funding for child care Although not given a great deal of space in the book, I was intrigued by Gornick and Meyers's analysis of tension among three discourses about work and family. Advocates for children tend to favor policies such as child tax credits and maternity leaves that make it easier for mothers to stay at home with young children, temporarily opting out of the labor market. Discourse about work-family conflict tends to favor policies that make it easier for women to be workers and parents simultaneously, such as part-time work, job sharing, and flexible schedules. Feminists emphasize the pursuit of gender equality by improving access to high-quality nonparental care for children and access to high-quality jobs for women. The problem with each of these solutions, according to Gornick and Meyers, is that they pit gender equality against the interests of children, in each case sacrificing one interest in favor of the other, and in all cases sidestepping the need for change in men's behavior. The dual-earner-dual-carer vision is an effort to simultaneously pursue both goals by transforming both men's and women's roles. Much of the book is devoted to articulating shortcomings in U.S. policies relative to other industrialized nations in North America or Europe. While the theme is familiar, the book includes an expansive, data-driven, and clear articulation of the evidence, drawing on national data sets and the content of specific regulations in several countries. For example, the U.S. spends $650 per child and 0.5% of its GDP on children, less than half the amounts allocated by countries in Scandinavia and Western Europe. Policy data are juxtaposed with an embarrassing litany of poor outcomes for children in the United States relative to their peers in other countries: high rates of low birth weight and mortality among infants, low achievement scores in science and math and high levels of television watching among school children, and high rates of teen pregnancy. …

Families that work: Policies for reconciling parenthood and employment

COVID-19, school closures, and child poverty: a social crisis in the making.

The main goal of this article is to unravel the social distribution of childcare policies: Who benefits from government investment in public childcare? The analysis complements earlier research on 

Who benefits? The social distribution of subsidized childcare in Sweden and Flanders

In this article we critically assess the social investment perspective that has become the dominant paradigm in European social policymaking. We identify and discuss some of its shortcomings that may hamper social progress for all. In doing so, we focus on three pillars central to the idea of social investment: social inclusion through work, individual responsibility and human capital investment. We find that the social investment perspective has some serious flaws when it comes to the social protection of vulnerable groups. This is strongly related to the continuing relevance of social class in explaining and remedying social inequalities. We conclude that investment cannot be the only rationale for welfare state intervention and that protecting people should remain equally high on the policy agenda.

/pdf/three-shortcomings-of-the-social-investment-perspective-39cz6zc9ix.pdf

Three Shortcomings of the Social Investment Perspective

Summary In the last few decades, measures to reconcile work and family life have risen in mutual interaction with a rising rate of dual earnership. However, dual earnership has (to date) been adopted in a socially uneven way in most European societies. Therefore, one may wonder whether the activation measures have brought about a loss of vertical redistribution in welfare states. We address this question by focusing on the interaction of three measures of family policy and their overall distributional effect in Europe, with the Belgian region of Flanders as the case in point. We develop a finegrained analysis to reveal the budgetary impact of the variation in use and generosity, and find that today in Flanders the redistributive effect of child benefits is largely undone by subsidized childcare and parental leave benefits. If parents’ employment is to be generalized, this case study suggests that more attention is required regarding the universal use of reconciliation measures.

The unequal benefits of activation: an analysis of the social distribution of family policy among families with young children

Under the social investment paradigm, a child-centred investment strategy has been developed. The mainstay of such a strategy is the provision of childcare services, which are expected to increase ...

/pdf/putting-the-child-centred-investment-strategy-to-the-test-2qmh7ycjz1.pdf

Wim Van Lancker

Papers

COVID-19, school closures, and child poverty: a social crisis in the making.

Who benefits? The social distribution of subsidized childcare in Sweden and Flanders

Three Shortcomings of the Social Investment Perspective

The unequal benefits of activation: an analysis of the social distribution of family policy among families with young children

Putting the Child-Centred Investment Strategy to the Test: Evidence for the EU27: