Andrea Brandolini

On Analyzing the World Distribution of Income

This paper argues that consideration of world inequality should cause us to re-examine the key concepts underlying the welfare approach to the measurement of income inequality and the inter-relation between the measurement of inequality and the measurement of poverty. There are three reasons why we feel that a re-examination is necessary: (i) the extent of global income differences means that we cannot simply carry over the methods used at a national level; we need a more flexible measure; (ii) we have to reconcile measures of world inequality and world poverty; and (iii) we need to explore more fully the different ways in which measures may be relative or absolute. This leads us to propose a new measure, which (a) combines poverty and inequality, including provision for those who are concerned only with poverty, (b) incorporates different approaches to the measurement of inequality; and (c) allows the cost of inequality to be expressed in different ways. Applied to the world distribution for the period 1820-1992, the new measure provides different perspectives on the evolution of global inequality.

Measurement of income distribution in supranational entities: the case of the European Union

Greater social cohesion is an explicit goal of the European Union. Progress is monitored considering the performance in each member country on the basis of national indicators; EU-wide estimates of inequality and poverty play no role. Yet this is a basic information to evaluate the progress of the Union toward grater social cohesion. This paper examines the methodological requirements of this evaluative exercise, and provides the first estimates of inequality and poverty in the enlarged European Union as if it was a single country.

The Great Recession and the distribution of household income

The ‘Great Recession’ was the worst macroeconomic downturn since the 1930s in most OECD countries. In many economies, subsequent recovery has been sluggish, and has sometimes turned into a new recession. The paper in vestigates the effects of the Great Recession on the distribution of household incomes. It shows that the changes between 2007 and 2009 in household incomes in total and on avera ge, in income inequality, and in poverty rates, were modest in most of the countries studied , in spite of the depth of the recession in most countries. This outcome is remarkably differen t from the far more dramatic experience of the Great Depression, although not so different from some recent recessions such as the Nordic crisis of the early 1990s. During the GR, th e household sector was protected from the impact of the downturn by both automatic stabiliser s and additional support of governments through the tax and benefit system. The post-2009 d istributional impacts of the GR are likely to have been considerably larger however, with grea ter differences across countries emerging.

Employment Growth in Italy in the 1990s: Institutional Arrangements and Market Forces

The chapter analyses the broad picture emerging from the 1993 incomes policy agreement in Italy as well as other policy actions (and omissions). The agreement was successful in producing a remarkable moderation of the relative price of labour - despite the reduction of the user cost of capital driven by the fall in interest rates – and an increase in labour demand and employment. In spite of this, however, the intensified international competition made structural problems of Italian industry much more severe, with negative effects on the growth of output and exports, and eventually employment.

Patterns of Economic Inequality in Western Democracies: Some Facts on Levels and Trends

A large body of research has documented comparative levels of inequality among nations and also the substantial change in inequality across and within nations. Political scientists, sociologists, and economists have used these databases to make a number of claims about changes in inequality and their interrelations with economic and political life, patterns of redistribution, social institutions, and social and individual wellbeing more generally.

Unveiling the Ethics behind Inequality Measurement: Dalton's Contribution to Economics

This article assesses the importance of Daltons 1920 paper in the Economic Journal for subsequent developments in income distribution analysis. Dalton, H. (1920). ‘The measurement of the inequality of incomes’, Economic Journal, vol. 30(119), pp. 348–61.

Chapter 3 - Multidimensional Poverty and Inequality

This chapter examines different approaches to the measurement of multidimensional inequality and poverty. It first outlines three aspects preliminary to any multidimensional study: the selection of the relevant dimensions, the indicators used to measure them, and the procedures for their weighting. It then considers the counting approach and the axiomatic treatment in poverty measurement. Finally, it reviews the axiomatic approach to inequality analysis. The chapter also provides a selective review of the rapidly growing theoretical literature with the twofold aim of highlighting areas for future research and offering some guidance on how to use multidimensional methods in empirical and policy-oriented applications.

Urban Poverty in Developed Countries

In this paper we investigate the urban/rural dimension of poverty in developed countries. We provide original estimates for Italy, we gather published statistics for France and the United States, and we produce novel cross-country estimates from the LIS database. We show that the size of urban poverty depends on where the boundaries of metropolitan districts are drawn and we observe that overlooking geographical differences in the cost of living is a particularly relevant hypothesis. We find that in France and the United States post-war economic growth and urbanisation were accompanied by a substantial reduction of the poverty risk for the rural population, while poverty rates improved less, or even sometimes deteriorated, for the urban population. The lack of a standard definition of urban/rural area precludes a rigorous comparative study. Our results indicate, however, that only in few countries (Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States) the greatest poverty rates are found in central cities, while in all other developed countries poor persons are still relatively more frequent in rural areas. This pattern is stronger in the four non-developed economies examined here.

Tony Atkinson and His Legacy

Tony Atkinson is universally celebrated for his outstanding contributions to the measurement and analysis of inequality, but he never saw the study of inequality as a separate branch of economics. He was an economist in the classical sense, rejecting any sub-field labelling of his interests and expertise, and he made contributions right across economics. His death on 1 January 2017 deprived the world of both an intellectual giant and a deeply committed public servant in the broadest sense of the term. This collective tribute highlights the range, depth and importance of Tony’s enormous legacy, the product of over fifty years’ work.