This article uses a unique panel data set of rural El Salvador to investigate the main sources of persistence and variability in incomes. Our econometric framework validly reduces a general panel model to a dynamic linear model with a covariance structure that can be estimated efficiently with...

Our research examines how individual and community factors influence the average length of poverty spells. We measure local economic conditions by the county unemployment rate and neighborhood spillover effects by the racial makeup and poverty rate of the county. We find that moving an...

This paper tests the existence of poverty traps in three Southern Cone countries: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. We apply the methodology developed by Antman and McKenzie (2005): based on pseudopanels, we model the income dynamics of households and analyze the existence of heterogeneity in their...

New analyses of personal income distribution in Germany, based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), show that the disparity in income distribution decreased in Germany in the period 2006-2010. However, this decline comes to a halt in 2011. The most influential forces for...

Assessments of whose income growth is the greatest and whose is the smallest are typically based on comparisons of income changes for income groups (e.g. rich versus poor) or income values (e.g. quantiles). However, income group and quantile composition changes over time because of income...

This paper considers the phenomenon of income mobility during the process of economic transition in Russia. The study is based on the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) data. The process of economic transition has generated sharp changes in the distribution of income among Russian...

Inequality of disposable incomes in Germany has decreased slightly since its peak in 2005. However, this trend did not continue in 2011. The most important reasons for this were the inequality in market incomes, including capital incomes, which had increased again. Besides this finding, the...

This paper develops a framework for the quantitative analysis of individual income dynamics, mobility and welfare. Individual income is assumed to follow a stochastic process with two (unobserved) components, an i.i.d. component representing measurement error or transitory income shocks and an...

Though much has been written about annual income inequality in China, little research has been conducted on longer run measures of income inequality and on income mobility. This paper compares income mobility of urban individuals in China and the United States in the 1990s. The following...