This paper shows that countries with high levels of "elitism" in higher-education are the countries displaying high levels of inequality. In other words, a higher level of "elitism", i.e., large gap in quality of universities, and tight selection in top universities leads to a wider gap in wages...

Several empirical papers have indicated that the health inequalities in the Nordic welfare states seem to be at least as high as health inequalities in other European countries even if the Nordic states have a more egalitarian income structure. This is in contrast to standard economic theory...

People who are unable to maintain the same standard of living as others around them experience a sense of relative deprivation that has been shown to reduce feelings of well-being. Relative deprivation reflects conditions of worsening relative poverty despite striking reductions in absolute...

Official data on the distribution of household incomes in the UK are available only with a significant lag: the latest statistics are for 2013-14. In this report, we use modelling techniques to provide a more up-to-date picture and to assess how things are likely to evolve in the coming years....

The focus of this report is the distribution of household income in the UK. We assess the changes to average incomes, income inequality and poverty that occurred in the latest year of data (2014-15), and put these in historical context using comparable data spanning the last 50 years. The...

Relying on the present literature, official statistics, and household survey data in the People's Republic of China, this paper summarizes research findings on the relationship between urbanization, urban-rural inequality, and poverty, and provides further empirical evidence on the role of...

Background: Poor health increases the likelihood of experiencing poverty by reducing a person’s ability to work and imparting costs associated with receiving medical treatment. Universal health care is a means of protecting against the impoverishing impact of high healthcare costs. This study...