A considerable literature exists on the measurement of income inequality in China and its increasing trend. Much less is known, however, about the driving forces of this trend and their quantitative contributions. Conventional decompositions, by factor components or by population subgroups, only...

This paper proposes a framework for incorporating longitudinal distributional changes into poverty decomposition. It is shown that changes in the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon index over time can be decomposed into two components—one component reflects the progressivity of income growth among the...

Food price increases and the introduction of radical social welfare and enterprise reforms during the 1990s generated significant changes in the lives of urban households in China. During this period urban poverty increased considerably. This paper uses household level data from 1986 to 2000 to...

Suppose that all people in the world are allocated only two characteristics: country where they live and social class within that country. Assume further that there is no migration. We show that 90 percent of variability in people’s global income position (percentile in world income...

Using for the first time survey data from 26 post-Communist countries, covering the period 1990-2005, the paper examines correlates of unprecedented increases in inequality registered by most of these economies. We find that, after controlling for country-fixed effects and type of survey used,...

The paper uses the data from Francois Quesnay's writings to derive a social table for pre-revolutionary France, estimate country's mean income and income distribution. These Quesnay-based estimates are compared with more recent estimates of 18th century French incomes and inequality.

In this paper we attempt to examine the role of social inequality and status effects in driving trade between two countries which differ systematically only in terms of income-distribution using a status-driven model of consumption involving a status and a non-status good. Our model illustrates...