Lupu and Pontusson (2011) argue that the structure of income inequality, rather than its level, can explain differences in fiscal redistribution across modern welfare states. Contrary to the assertion that there is robust evidence in support of this proposition, the present paper challenges the...

Lupu and Pontusson (2011) argue that the structure of income inequality, rather than its level, can explain differences in fiscal redistribution across modern welfare states. Contrary to the assertion that there is robust evidence in support of this proposition, the present paper challenges the...

In many OECD countries income inequality has risen, but surprisingly re-distribution as well. The theory attributes this partly to the redistributive effect of education spending. In the model income inequality and growth depend in an inverted U-shaped way on education. To maintain a given level...

One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. In this paper, we apply a simply approach to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows a...

Is the extent of income inequality associated with average population health differences between wealthy countries? And, are between-country variations in indicators of the psychosocial environment associated with between-country health differences? This study carries out the most complete...

The paper investigates the effectiveness of the median voter as a decisive agent in the process of redistribution. According to the previous literature, it tests several assumptions finding interesting results: The positive relation between inequality and redistribution is confirmed, but the...

The reformulation of the median voter hypothesis and its testing proposed in Milanovic (2000) has been criticized from four different perspectives. The critiques are discussed and assessed.

Based on the standard axiom of individual utility maximization, rational choice has postulated that higher income inequality translates into greater redistribution by shaping the median voter's preferences. While numerous papers have tested this proposition, the literature has remained divided...

This study examines empirically the impact of income polarization on economic growth in an unbalanced panel of more than 70 countries during the 1960-2005 period. We calculate various polarization indices using existing micro-level datasets, as well as datasets reconstructed from grouped data on...

We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study in order to quantify the economy-wide monetary gains achieved by household-size economies due to within-household sharing of goods by individuals living in multimember households. In most countries out of the twenty countries we examine, we observe a...