"Shared prosperity" has become a common phrase in the development policy discourse. This short paper provides its most widely used operational definition - the growth rate in the average income of the poorest 40 percent of a country's population - and describes its origins. The paper discusses...

In this paper, we study how the tax-and-transfer system reduces the inequality of lifetime income by redistributing lifetime earnings between individuals with different skill endowments and by providing individuals with insurance against lifetime earnings risk. Based on a dynamic life-cycle...

Die Bundesregierung hat die Förderung von Beschäfti- gung mit niedrigen Bruttoarbeitsentgelten (Midijobs) zum 1. Januar 2023 ausgeweitet und die Verdienstobergrenze auf 2 000 Euro brutto monatlich angehoben. Rund 6,2 Millionen Menschen mit einem Midijob profitieren von reduzierten...

In der aktuellen Reformdiskussion stehen Steuer- und Abgabenentlastungen für geringe und mittlere Einkommen im Fokus. Berechnungen des DIW Berlin zeigen, wie sich verschiedene Entlastungskonzepte auswirken. So entlastet ein Grundfreibetrag für Sozialbeiträge alle Einkommensgruppen, wobei...

Angesichts demografiebedingt steigender Ausgaben in der Rentenversicherung wird verstärkt über Einsparpotenziale diskutiert. Dabei wird unter anderem vorgeschlagen, die vor zehn Jahren eingeführte Mütterrente wieder abzuschaffen. Allerdings hätte eine Streichung dieser Rentenzuschüsse für...

This study uses German social security records to provide novel evidence about the heterogeneity in life expectancy by lifetime earnings and, additionally, documents the distributional implications of this earnings-related heterogeneity. We find a strong association between lifetime earnings and...

Thirty years after the "Washington Consensus", is there a new policy consensus that addresses the problem of inequality? This paper argues that there is widespread acceptance that multiple, interrelated and mutually reinforcing inequalities exist - in income, wealth, education, health, power,...

We axiomatically characterize two classes of poverty measures which are sensitive to inequality of opportunity - one a strict subset of the other. The proposed indices are sensitive not only to income shortfalls from the poverty line, but also to differences in opportunities faced by people with...

Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort differences, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. We construct two new metadata...

Building on earlier work by political philosophers, economists have recently sought to define a concept of equity that accommodates the fairness of reward to individual responsibility and effort, while allowing for the existence of some inequalities which are unfair and should be compensated....