This chapter reviews the basic conceptual foundations for the measurement of polarization, the origins of those foundations, how polarization is distinct from inequality and other ways of considering distances and differences across individuals, and how polarization can be measured in an...

We provide an overview of microsimulation approaches for assessing the effects of policy on income distribution. We focus on the role of tax-benefit policies and review the concept of microsimulation and how it contributes to the analysis of income distribution in general and policy evaluation...

How did we come to think that eliminating poverty is a legitimate goal for public policy? What policies emerged in the hope of attaining that goal? The last 200 years have witnessed a dramatic change in thinking about poverty. Mainstream economic thinking in the eighteenth century held that...

In this paper we revisit the relationship between democracy, redistribution, and inequality. We first explain the theoretical reasons why democracy is expected to increase redistribution and reduce inequality, and why this expectation may fail to be realized when democracy is captured by the...

To what extent can increasing inequality be explained by globalization? And if there is a connection, what if anything can and should be done about it? This chapter begins with an overview of how conventional trade theory has fared in predicting changes in inequality and how it has needed to be...

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...

Considering the contribution of the distribution of individual wages and earnings to that of household incomes we find two separate literatures that should be brought together, and bring “new institutions” into play. Growing female employment, rising dual-earnership and part-time employment...

We examine the relationship between income and health with the purpose of establishing the extent to which the distribution of health in a population contributes to income inequality and is itself a product of that inequality. The evidence supports a substantial impact of ill-health on income,...

Studies of inequality often ignore resource allocation within the household. In doing so they miss an important element of the distribution of welfare that can vary dramatically depending on overall environmental and economic factors. Thus, measures of inequality that ignore intrahousehold...