Using a sample of 20 OECD countries it is shown that the majority of countries decreased the level of intragenerational redistribution in the first pillar of their pension systems, though the evidence is weak in statistical terms. We find strong correlations between changes of the so-called...

The rapid rise of China on the global economic stage could have substantial and unequal employment and wage effects in advanced industrialised democracies given China's large volume of low-wage labour. Thus far, these effects have not been analysed in the comparative political economy...

Current studies addressing the rise in inequality confine themselves to country-level developments. This paper delineates trends in earnings inequality and employment at the sectoral level for eight LIS countries between 1985-2005. Earnings inequality mainly manifests itself within rather than...

Low and variable farm income has been a main rationale for heavy government intervention in agricultural markets and income transfers to farmers whether in Europe in response to disruptive agricultural imports and low world prices at the end of the 19th century or in the US in response to the...

At a time when policy-makers in many developed countries continue to justify farm support on the basis of relatively low and unstable incomes, this chapter shows that incomes of farm households are not particularly lower on average compared to those of non-farm households in most of the ten...

Many studies have focused on how demographic dynamics, such as changes in marriage patterns and the increasing share of households headed by a single adult, may contribute to rising earnings inequality. Here we instead ask how demographic differences between countries may underpin differences in...

This paper summarizes the highlights and implications of the forthcoming OECD project report entitled 'Income Distribution in OECD Countries: The Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study.'

This paper is motivated by the fact that even though most advanced economies have experienced similar changes in family structure and in the structure of their labor markets during the past two decades, their child poverty rates vary dramatically, from less than 3 percent to more than 20...

The aim of this paper is to identify the age-, sex- and cause-specific premature mortality rates contributing to the association between life expectancy and income distribution in developed countries. On finding evidence suggesting that reported income distribution is strongly affected by low...

This paper investigates trends in financial poverty in OECD countries by asking the following questions: 1) Have overall levels of poverty increased, decreased or remained stable? 2) Has the incidence of poverty shifted from certain demographic groups to others? 3) How has the social income...