Inequality in Mexico rose between 1989 and 1994 and declined between 1994 and 2010. We examine the role of market forces (demand and supply of labour by skill), institutional factors (minimum wages and unionization rate), and public policy (cash transfers) in explaining changes in inequality. We...

We examine the drivers of inequality change in Honduras between 1991-2007, trying to understand why inequality increased in Honduras until 2005, while it was falling in most other Latin American countries. Using annual household surveys, we document first rising inequality between 1991-2005,...

Based on tax records data from Ecuador, we analyse gender differences in top income groups from 2008 to 2017. Ecuador represents an interesting case as it shares many trends with other countries in the region in terms of women's status in the labour market. While we observe a significant...

Overall income inequality in South Africa is very high, and inequality generated in the labour market is a key driver of inequality. In this paper, I use the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series, the General Household Surveys, and administrative tax microdata to describe earnings inequality in...

In this paper we identify some of the drivers of changes in the distribution of earnings and earnings inequality in the South African labour market between 2000 and 2014. Although the overall level of earnings inequality between 2000 and 2011 was high and relatively stable, there were...

We analyse the evolution and proximate determinants of labour income inequality in Mexico between 1989 and 2017. Labour income inequality increased between 1989 and 1994 and declined between 1994 and 2006. What happened after 2006 is subject to uncertainty. The national labour force survey shows...

Contrary to the popular notion that money that is easily earned, is also easily spent, economic theory holds that income is fungible. Drawing on the concept of mental accounting, this study theoretically explores when such a link between spending behaviour and the effort dispensed in obtaining...

A subjective well-being approach is followed to assess the magnitude of inefficiency in the use of income. The information comes from a Mexican survey and an X-inefficiency technique is used. The paper shows that there exists substantial inefficiency in the use of income at all income levels,...

This paper applies recent developments in collective model estimation to elicit the household resource sharing rule, i.e. the amount of household resources accruing to fathers, mothers, and their children among African families in South Africa. We use the 2010/11 South African Income and...

Macroeconomic instability has been increasingly considered as a factor lowering average income growth and, in this way, is a factor slowing down poverty reduction. But it can also result in slower poverty reduction for a given average rate of growth, due to poverty traps, often examined at the...