Este trabalho investiga a contribuição dos rendimentos do funcionalismo público para a evolução da desigualdade no Brasil, medida através do índice de Gini. A metodologia utilizada, que decompõe esse índice segundo parcelas da renda, mostra que as mudanças na desigualdade geral podem ser explicadas pelas variações na composição e concentração da renda dessas mesmas parcelas. Utilizando dados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) de 1995 a 2009, é analisada tanto a evolução no número de funcionários públicos como seus rendimentos, considerando os regimes de contratação praticados pelo setor público e/ou seus entes federativos. Com base nessas informações, as contribuições das diversas parcelas para as mudanças na desigualdade geral nos mandatos de Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) e Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) são apresentadas, analisadas e comparadas. Conclui-se que os rendimentos do funcionalismo público como um todo colaboram para a queda do índice de Gini na gestão FHC, mas contribuem para seu aumento durante o governo Lula; This paper investigates the contribution of earnings of civil servants to the evolution of income inequality in Brazil, as measured by the Gini index. The methodology...

In this paper, we assess the impact of fiscal consolidation on income inequality. Using a panel of 18 industrialized countries from 1970 to 2010, we find that income inequality significantly rises both during periods of fiscal consolidation and in the aftermath of such adjustments. In addition, fiscal authority that is driven by spending cuts seems to be more detrimental for income distribution than in the case of tax hikes. Considering the linkages between banking crises and fiscal consolidation, we show that the impact on the income gap is amplified when fiscal adjustments take place after the resolution of such financial turmoils. Our results also provide support for the Kuznets relationship and corroborate the idea that trade can lead to a more unequal distribution of income.; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

OBJECTIVE: To analyze cause-specific mortality rates according to the relative income hypothesis. METHODS: All 96 administrative areas of the city of São Paulo, southeastern Brazil, were divided into two groups based on the Gini coefficient of income inequality: high (>0.25) and low (<0.25). The propensity score matching method was applied to control for confounders associated with socioeconomic differences among areas. RESULTS: The difference between high and low income inequality areas was statistically significant for homicide (8.57 per 10,000; 95%CI: 2.60;14.53); ischemic heart disease (5.47 per 10,000 [95%CI 0.76;10.17]); HIV/AIDS (3.58 per 10,000 [95%CI 0.58;6.57]); and respiratory diseases (3.56 per 10,000 [95%CI 0.18;6.94]). The ten most common causes of death accounted for 72.30% of the mortality difference. Infant mortality also had significantly higher age-adjusted rates in high inequality areas (2.80 per 10,000 [95%CI 0.86;4.74]), as well as among males (27.37 per 10,000 [95%CI 6.19;48.55]) and females (15.07 per 10,000 [95%CI 3.65;26.48]). CONCLUSIONS: The study results support the relative income hypothesis. After propensity score matching cause-specific mortality rates was higher in more unequal areas. Studies on income inequality in smaller areas should take proper accounting of heterogeneity of social and demographic characteristics.

From 1960 to the present, many low and middle income countries have experienced significant economic growth and unprecedented improvements in population health. We examine the complex relationship between economic growth and population health, including the economic and health impacts of malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, reproductive health issues, and the associated intervention policies. We also examine the impact of several pertinent economic policies on population health, including microfinance, the TRIPS agreement, and UNIT AID, an international organization for purchasing drugs for use against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. In addition we examine the effects of globalization on population health and economic growth. The evidence indicates that investment in improved population health is a reasonable macroeconomic policy tool for economic growth in low and middle income countries because improved health status has a positive impact on economic performance, and diminished health status has a negative impact on economic performance. Furthermore, variations in the rates of diffusion of disease control technologies have been a major cause of the variations in population health and economic growth between countries. Since 1960...

This paper presents a comparative overview of mobility patterns in 14 Latin American countries between 1992 and 2003. Using three alternative econometric techniques on constructed pseudo-panels, the paper provides a set of estimators for the traditional notion of income mobility as well as for mobility around extreme and moderate poverty lines. The estimates suggest very high levels of time-dependent unconditional immobility for the region. However, the introduction of socioeconomic and personal factors reduces the estimate of income immobility by around 30 percent. There are also large variations in country-specific income mobility (estimated to explain some additional 10 percent of inter-temporal income variation). Analyzing the determinants of changes in poverty incidence within cohorts revealed statistically significant roles for age, gender, and education of the household head, the latter subject to distinctive effects across levels of attainment and transition in and out of poverty.

This paper investigates the relationship of household income with child labor. The analysis uses a rich dataset obtained in the context of a conditional cash transfer program in a poor region of Nicaragua in 2005 and 2006. The program has a strong productive emphasis and seeks to diversify the work portfolio of beneficiaries while imposing conditionalities on the household. The author develops a simple model that relates child labor to household income, preferences, and production technology. It turns out that child labor does not always decrease with income; the relationship is complex and exhibits an inverted-U shape. Applying the data to the model confirms that the relationship is concave when all children (8-15 years of age) are included in the sample. Expanding the analysis by stratifying the sample by age and gender shows that the relationship holds only for older children, both genders. The author investigates the effect of the conditional cash transfer program on child labor. The results show that the program has a decreasing effect on total hours of work for the full sample of children. Disentangling labor into two types - physically demanding labor and non-physical labor - reveals that the program has opposite effects on each type; it decreases physically demanding labor while increasing participation in non-physical (more intellectually oriented) tasks for children.

Communities supported by World Bank rural development projects often cite support for the development of income-generating activities (IGAs) as a critical need. This note identifies some of the core problems encountered by Bank task teams that attempt to respond to this need, outlines the issues involved, and offers suggestions on some of the points that should be kept in mind when designing grant programs for this purpose. Specifically, this note looks at how grants can develop economic and social infrastructure, how grants can be used to acquire privately owned productive assets, and suggestions on designing such types of grants. The paper concludes with ideas on the role for grants for income generation, and how such grant programs must be carefully designed and monitored.

This paper summarizes the literature on the impact of state subsidized or social health insurance schemes that have been offered, mostly on a voluntary basis, to the informal sector in low- and middle-income countries. A substantial number of papers provide estimations of average treatment on the treated effect for insured persons. The authors summarize papers that correct for the problem of self-selection into insurance and papers that estimate the average intention to treat effect. Summarizing the literature was difficult because of the lack of (1) uniformity in the use of meaningful definitions of outcomes that indicate welfare improvements and (2) clarity in the consideration of selection issues. They find the uptake of insurance schemes, in many cases, to be less than expected. In general, we find no strong evidence of an impact on utilization, protection from financial risk, and health status. However, a few insurance schemes afford significant protection from high levels of out-of-pocket expenditures. In these cases...

Demand for social protection is growing in low income countries and fragile situations. In recent years, the success of social protection (SP) interventions in middle income countries (MICs) like Brazil and Mexico, along with the series of food, fuel, and financial crises, has prompted policymakers in low income countries (LICs) and fragile situations (FSs) to examine the possibility of introducing such programs in their own countries. Flagship programs in countries as diverse as Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, and Rwanda have shown the adaptability of social protection interventions to the LIC context. Yet, despite growing levels of support for these initiatives, many challenges remain. In LICs and FSs, governments are confronted with a nexus of mutually reinforcing deficits that increase the need for SP programs and simultaneously reduce their ability to successfully respond. Governments face hard choices about the type, affordability, and sustainability of SP interventions. The paper reviews how these factors affect SP programs in these countries and identifies ways to address the deficits. It supports the establishment of resilient SP systems to address specific needs and vulnerabilities and to respond flexibly to both slow and sudden onset crises. To achieve this...

Risk-aversion has generally been found to decrease in income. This may lead one to expect that poor countries will be more risk-averse than rich countries. Recent comparative findings with students, however, suggest the opposite, giving rise to a risk-income paradox. This paper tests this paradox by measuring the risk preferences of more than 500 household heads spread over the highlands of Ethiopia and finds high degrees of risk tolerance. The paper also finds risk tolerance to increase in income proxies, thus completing the paradox. Using exogenous proxies, the paper concludes that part of the causality must run from income to risk tolerance. The findings suggest that risk preferences cannot be blamed for the failure to adopt new technologies. Alternative explanations are discussed.

Supporting families with children is one of the Government’s key objectives. It plays a major part in the building of Australia’s future generations. We have a strong, effective family assistance system that has delivered substantial benefits to families.

This paper reviews major developments in the provision of financial assistance to families with children, how these will be changed under the Government’s tax reform package and identifies some outstanding policy issues. The paper does not seek to overview the interaction between the family payments and the income tax systems insofar as they impact on the financial position of Australian families. That is not the purpose of this paper, which is to raise outstanding policy issues within the realm of the income support provided to families. Studies that have examined the interaction between the tax and family assistance systems point to the marked rise in the value of family payments for lower income families and the relative decline in family payments for higher income families over the past two decades.; no

The myth of equality in Australian society is clearly exposed by the large income gap between indigenous and other Australians. Data from the 1986, 1991 and 1996 Censuses is used to conduct a cohort analysis of the income distributions for indigenous and non-indigenous males and females. Single-year age cohorts are used in the first longitudinal regression analysis of indigenous income. Trends in relative income deprivation are identified.; yes

(Note: Abridged abstract) Income contingent loans (ICL) are policy instruments that can enable participation in activities that yield both public and private benefits, with repayment conditions that promote equity, remove the risk of loan default, smooth consumption, and thus increase utility for loan recipients. Three essays are presented on the development and costing of ICLs. The first two essays consider the application of ICLs to paid parental leave and to student income support, and they are approached from the perspective of financial product design: context and motivation are described; product features are chosen to balance consumer needs and affordability with provider costs; models are developed and populated with assumptions and parameters; and the models are used to undertake risk assessment and costing. In the first essay, an ICL is developed as an extension to the recently introduced Australian statutory paid parental leave scheme. Design features are proposed to mitigate adverse selection and moral hazard, and it is shown that the ICL could be a cost effective and equitable means of providing parents with the necessary leave so as to optimise both private and public returns. In the second essay, an ICL is motivated and developed for the shortfall in student income support for higher education. The consequences of different loan indexation arrangements to expected taxpayer costs...

A utilitarian social planner who maximizes social welfare assigns the available income to those who are most efficient in converting income into utility. However, when individuals are concerned about their income falling behind the incomes of others, the optimal income distribution under utilitarianism is equality of incomes.

We apply a novel decomposition of panel data on individual incomes in 30 countries and find the US is exceptional in its increases of income risk over the last decades. Income risk is decomposed into long-run inequality, intertemporal variability around individual-specific growth rates (volatility), and variation in individual-specific growth rates (mobility risk) using a decomposable generalized entropy measure. We also measure the degree to which the government tax and transfer system lowers longrun inequality, intertemporal variation, and mobility risk, and again the US is exceptional, with the tax and transfer system lowering the risk of net income less in the US than in other developed countries we examine. We further find that growth rates are positively associated with long-run mean incomes in most countries, implying growth tends not to be pro-poor, and that volatility tends to be higher for those with higher long-run mean incomes, so that form of risk may be progressively distributed.

This paper studies the mechanisms behind the informal economy in high-income countries. About 16.3% of output in high-income OECD countries was produced informally in 2001-02. In a recent paper Davis and Henrekson [2004] show that there exists a positive relationship between tax rates and the informal economy for high-income OECD countries. Existing models of the informal economy mostly focus on developing countries. To account for the informal economy in high-income countries, build a model economy, following Lucas [1978], in which agents of different managerial abilities decide to become workers, managers of informal firms, or managers of formal firms. In contrast to formal managers, managers of informal firms do not pay taxes but run the risk of getting caught, taxed, and fined. A calibrated version of the model economy is able to generate the observed differences in informal economy of 21 high-income countries. Although tax rates are crucial for explaining the observed differences in informal economy, the quality of governance, the extent to which these tax rates are enforced, also plays an important role. Policy experiments show that by improving the enforcement of their tax policies countries can reduce informality. A smaller informal economy is accompanied by larger firms and higher productivity.

In this article we quantify the aggregate, distributional and welfare consequences of two revenue neutral flat-tax reforms using a model economy that replicates the U.S. distributions of earnings, income and wealth in very much detail. We find that the less progressive reform brings about a 2.4 percent increase in steady-state output and a more unequal distribution of after-tax income. In contrast, the more progressive reform brings about a -2.6 percent reduction in steady-state output and a distribution of aftertax income that is more egalitarian. We also find that in the less progressive flat-tax economy aggregate welfare falls by -0.17 percent of consumption, and in the more progressive flat-tax economy it increases by 0.45 percent of consumption. In both flattax reforms the income poor pay less income taxes and obtain sizeable welfare gains.

This paper employs the theory of equality of opportunity, described in Roemer’s book (Equality of Opportunity, Harvard University Press, 1998), to compute the extent to which tax-and-transfer regimes in 11 countries equalize opportunities among citizens for income acquisition. Roughly speaking, equality of opportunity for incomes has been achieved in a country when it is the case that the distributions of post-fisc income are the same for different types of citizen, where a citizen’s type is defined by the socio-economic status of his parents. Intuitively, a country will have equalized opportunity if the chances of earning high (or low) income are equal for citizens from all family backgrounds. Of course, pre-fisc income distributions, by type, will not be identical, as long as the educational system does not entirely make up for the disadvantage that children, who come from poor families face, but the tax-and-transfer system can play a role in rectifying that inequality. We include, in our computation, two numbers that summarize the extent to which each country’s current fiscal regime achieves equalization of opportunities for income, and the deadweight loss that would be incurred by moving to the regime that does.

Chakravarty, Dutta and Weymark (1985) present operational axioms for an ethical index of income mobility that are best suited for a two period world. This paper suggests a decomposition of this index into two terms: (i) an index of structural or snapshot mobility, which captures the welfare effect of differences in the inequality of the cross-section income distributions; and (ii) an index of exchange or rerankings mobility, which captures the welfare impact of rank reversals between the first- and the second-period income distributions. Income inequality reductions and rank reversals are always welfare enhancing. The properties of all the income mobility concepts introduced in the paper do not require any new value judgements beyond the traditional ones.

Chakravarty, Dutta and Weymark (1985) present axioms for an ethical index of relative income mobility in a two period world. This paper presents a decomposition of this index into two terms: (i) an index of structural mobility which captures differences in the inequality of the cross-section income distributions, and (ii) an index of exchange mobility which captures changes in relative incomes. These concepts are shown to be useful in the evaluation of an income tax system which induces rerankings between the pre-tax and the after-tax income distributions, as well as in other contexts where there are reorderings between individuals.