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...

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...

We provide an analytical framework within which changes in income inequality over time are related to the pattern of income growth across the income range, and the reshuffling of individuals in the income pecking order. We use it to explain how it was possible both for 'the poor' to have fared...

Methods are developed for income mobility comparisons between countries or between population subgroups based on the construction of mobility profiles. Mobility profiles provide an evocative picture of both the magnitude of income changes in a population, and its distribution across the income...

This paper documents the magnitude of income mobility in Germany and its distribution across different income positions, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. The suggested graphical approach makes it straightforward to identify the portions of the distribution that have the largest...

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 presents an empirical analysis of the income mobility of older people in Great Britain and the Netherlands, using longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Dutch Socio-Economic Panel (SEP) for the period 1991 to 1997. Using the full potential of the...

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...

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...