This chapter provides a thorough survey of what recent international (i.e., cross-country) studies can tell us about the multiple causes of income inequality in the OECD area with regard to both levels and trends. The survey covers economics literature in particular but also relevant evidence...

This chapter reviews the empirical evidence on the levels and trends in income/consumption inequality and poverty in developing countries. It includes a discussion of data sources and measurement issues, evidence on the levels of inequality and poverty across countries and regions, an assessment...

Like the other chapters in this volume of the Handbook of Income Distribution (and its predecessor), the aim of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of a particular area of research. We examine the literature on post-1970 trends in poverty and income inequality, up to 2010 or 2011...

This paper estimates the number of poor in various countries in Asia by applying an "amalgam poverty line", which is a weighted average of an absolute poverty line (such as $1.25 per day or $1.45 per day) and a reference income (such as the mean or the median income). The number of poor is...

This chapter investigates recent advances in our understanding of the global distribution of income, and produces the first estimates of global inequality that take into account data on the incomes of the top one percent within countries. We discuss conceptual and methodological issues –...

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...

Relying on the present literature, official statistics, and household survey data in the People's Republic of China, this paper summarizes research findings on the relationship between urbanization, urban-rural inequality, and poverty, and provides further empirical evidence on the role of...

In this paper, we analyze the link between nutrition and poverty in two Asian countries where monetary-based poverty reduction was especially successful. Thailand and Viet Nam are two emerging market economies where poverty rates are now below 10% and are declining further. Despite this success,...

In this paper, we employ stochastic dominance (SD) analysis on household unit records to measure relative welfare levels and investigate sources of inequality in the Philippines from 2000 to 2012. Using SD techniques developed in Chow, Valenzuela, and Wong (2016), we test for richness and...

This paper examines dynamic measures of growth inclusiveness derived from growth incidence curves. These curves help identify the extent to which each decile of households benefits from growth. The paper discusses the main features of growth incidence curves, their design, computation, data...