This paper investigates some major changes in the wealth distribution in China using the data from two national household surveys conducted in 1995 and 2002. The surveys collected rich information on household wealth and its components, enabling a...
This study seeks to add to the research on inequality in least developed countries, namely in Mozambique, by measuring and mapping indicators of horizontal wealth inequality along geographic regions and ethnolinguistic identities. Using census data...
This paper presents a simple model to show how distributional concerns can engender social conflict. We have a two period model, where the cost of conflict is endogenous in the sense that parties involved have full control over how much conflict they...
The study uses an asset index of consumer durables to track changes in household wealth in Ghana during the recent period of strong growth. Using the Ghana Living Standards Survey of 1998 that contains both wealth data and consumer durable data, the...
Land and wealth are closely related in rural Brazil, a country characterized by high levels of inequality in terms of income or landholdings. After presenting a historical retrospective of land concentration and land reform in Brazil, this study...
This study discusses the evolution of personal wealth in transition economies. While data availability is still a problem, the available indirect evidence suggests privatization has resulted in an increase in personal wealth but also in personal...
This paper contributes to the literature by reviewing levels, trends, and structure of inequality since the early 1990s in India. It draws extensively on the existing literature, supplemented with analyses of multiple data sources, to paint a picture...
Using original survey data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of consumption, we study the role played by land inheritance, other bequests and parental background as influences on an adult’s economic welfare and economic activities...
This paper seeks to understand whether the way in which inequality is communicated through measurements influences individuals’ fairness perceptions regarding wealth inequality. It begins from the premise that prominent measures of inequality, such...
The majority of income inequality occurs at the tails of the income distribution The Gini coefficient does not provide a representative measure of income inequality When the top 10% of income earners expand their share of national income it often...
Wim Naudé and James C. MacGee Globally, wealth is very unequally distributed, both within countries and between countries. The UNU-WIDER project on...
Part of Book Extractive Industries
At our 30th Anniversary Conference we took the chance to interview Martin Ravallion of Georgetown University—we asked him to discuss his recent work...
In Angola, the availability of two abundant resources (oil and diamonds) has prolonged the conflict beyond its Cold War context. The geography and political economy of these resources were crucial to the course taken by the conflict. Matching the...
The paper finds that a new system of social stratification is emerging in rural China in the wake of economic reforms, one that is far less equal than what preceded it. As part of this trend, wealth inequality has increased markedly in a short period...
There has been much recent research on the world distribution of income, but also growing recognition of the importance of other contributions to well-being, including those of household wealth. Wealth is important in providing security and...
Part of Journal Special Issue Horizontal inequality in the Global South
This paper is the first to compare global trends in income and wealth inequality this century. It is based on large income and wealth microdata samples designed to be representative of all countries in the world.Measured by the Gini coefficient...
Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...
We examine the heterogeneous and dynamic impact of China’s New Rural Pension Scheme on intergenerational wealth dependence using a nationally representative longitudinal household survey covering the period 2011–13. We adopt an instrumental quantile...
Part of Journal Special Issue Inequality
This paper discusses issues that arise in the comparison of estimates of wealth holdings and their distribution in light of data for selected OECD countries. We find large differences in the level of wealth, depending on whether the mean or median...
This paper reviews the principal source of India’s wealth distribution statistics, which is constituted by the five decennial Reserve Bank of India National Sample Survey Organization Surveys on Debt and Investment of 1961-62, 1971-72, 1981-82, 1991...
This paper provides a descriptive analysis of wealth ownership and wealth inequality in Latin American countries, using diverse published sources and primary data analysis for 16 nations. We produce estimates of the distribution of home ownership...
Tony Addison As the snow continues to lie deep across Helsinki, UNU-WIDER is putting the last touches to the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the...
26 September 2014 Roger Williamson Huge interest in the WIDER Inequality Conference (5-6 September) Inequality is big news. Whether you think Thomas...
30 October 2014 by Roger Williamson In this interview Professor Anthony Shorrocks describes the methodology to research global household wealth...
Part of Journal Special Issue Symposium on Spatial Inequality in Latin America
Part of Journal Special Issue The New Economy
Part of Book Inequality in the Developing World
Part of Journal Special Issue Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
The aim of this paper is to examine the concentration of wealth among the group of top wealth holders, defined as those with wealth in excess of a high cut off. The paper begins by considering the definition of this cut off, analogous to the...
Does the existence of formal title to land and real estate matter for the distribution of wealth? This paper reviews the empirical literature on the economic impact of land and real estate administration systems across countries. This paper argues...
This paper considers asset holdings in rural Ethiopia. It shows that households own mostly non-financial assets and that the composition of asset portfolios varies significantly with the household’s overall wealth and its exposure to uncertainty. As...
Official balance sheet estimates for the household sector are not currently available in South Africa, yet, with the country’s well developed financial sector and deep capital markets, asset market channels are likely to be important determinants of...
The objective of this paper is to study the dynamics of the wealth distribution over the path of economic development. More specifically, we are interested in distinguishing between changes which seem to be country specific and characteristics shared...
In this paper we discuss the results of research into the impact of foreign aid on human development. Rather than focusing on per capita income, as is common in the existing literature, we look at how aid impacts on a range of human development...
Do elites capture foreign aid? This study documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management but not in...
We study the short-term effect of the introduction of the mandatory disclosure programme for aggressive tax arrangements by focusing on the one introduced in May 2018 under Council Directive 2018/288/EU (or DAC6). Employing bilateral data on cross...
This paper discusses the issue of taxation and redistribution in economies dominated by Elites with limited state capacity. Within a simple aggregate framework, we discuss the political economy incentives of Elites to tax, redistribute and increase...
In the former socialist redistributive economies, the transition to market economy and the conversion to private ownership followed different trajectories. The paper offers an overview on how a new class of grand bourgeoisie was formed in three...
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
We provide an axiomatic treatment of the measurement of economic insecurity, assuming that individual insecurity depends on the current wealth level and its variations experienced in the past. The first component plays the role of a buffer stock to...
We provide the first estimate of the level and distribution of global household wealth. Mean assets and debts within countries are measured, partly or wholly, for 38 countries using household balance sheet and survey data centred on the year 2000...
Increased equity participation by employees has attracted substantial interest for its potential to affect both economic outcomes (e.g., worker and firm performance) and social outcomes (e.g., wealth and income inequality). This paper summarizes the...
Inequality in the distribution of family income, which had remained virtually unchanged since the end of World War II until 1968, has increased sharply since then. Inequality in household wealth has increased even more dramatically, with the share of...
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