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Author: Alicia Cavanaugh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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"Income inequality has increased significantly in more than three quarters of OECD countries over the last few decades (OECD, 2011). This rise in inequality has been particularly pronounced in the United States, and especially so across urban areas where the average metropolitan total income Gini coefficient rose from .45 to .52 over the 1980 to 2010 period. During this time, the increasingly uneven distribution of income reflects the pulling away of high-income earners with the top decile share of income rising from 35% to nearly 50%. Such an increase in inequality has far-reaching effects, undermining political, economic, social and environmental stability. The processes that drive inequality, working simultaneously at the global and local scales, take place in and shape the environment. This thesis examines trends in metropolitan income inequality in the United States and its relationship to environmental inequality by asking two overarching questions: 1) how is income inequality distributed across metropolitan areas in the US and how have these patterns changed over time? and (2) how is metropolitan income inequality related to environmental inequality in the US? The systematic review (Chapter 2) shows that as income inequality has grown, there has been a commensurate growth in the literature, especially since the mid- to late-1990s. Researchers from a multitude of disciplines have sought to further our understanding of income inequality, examining both the (i) causes of and (ii) consequences of rising inequality from a variety of perspectives. Indeed, the review finds that one of the hallmarks of the literature is a growing trend towards interdisciplinary and multidimensional approaches to the study of inequality as roughly half of the top journals publishing work on both the causes and consequences of inequality cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Findings also suggest there is a need for a better understanding of the dynamics of inequality at the metropolitan level.To shed light on these dynamics, this thesis uses the Census Bureau’s Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) to build a unique large-scale comparative dataset for 226 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the US (Chapter 3). In terms of our understanding of the drivers of metropolitan inequality, modeling results suggest that education has the strongest impact on rising inequality; metropolitan areas with greater educational dispersion typically have higher levels of inequality, while increasing educational differences within metropolitan areas drive internal growth in inequality. Racial segregation is also linked to increasing inter-metropolitan inequality; places with greater levels of segregation are more unequal, and deepening segregation within metropolitan areas increases inequality. On the consequences side, much of the literature has focused its efforts on understanding the health outcomes of inequality. Much less attention has been paid to the potential environmental outcomes of higher inequality, particularly from an inter-metropolitan comparative perspective. To this effect, the panel model results presented in Chapter 4 are mixed. On the one hand, the examination of the long-run inequality-environment connection highlights a positive relationship between environmental degradation and inequality across US cities. On the other hand, short-term models show that while an increase in metropolitan inequality is associated with decreasing degradation, deepening segregation continues to be linked with increasing levels of pollution. These cross-city results lend further support to existing state-level and intra-metropolitan case study findings in the US. Future research should work toward obtaining better quality environmental degradation and pollution data at the metropolitan level in order to better parse out the connections between rising inequality and environmental outcomes"--
Author: Alicia Cavanaugh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
"Income inequality has increased significantly in more than three quarters of OECD countries over the last few decades (OECD, 2011). This rise in inequality has been particularly pronounced in the United States, and especially so across urban areas where the average metropolitan total income Gini coefficient rose from .45 to .52 over the 1980 to 2010 period. During this time, the increasingly uneven distribution of income reflects the pulling away of high-income earners with the top decile share of income rising from 35% to nearly 50%. Such an increase in inequality has far-reaching effects, undermining political, economic, social and environmental stability. The processes that drive inequality, working simultaneously at the global and local scales, take place in and shape the environment. This thesis examines trends in metropolitan income inequality in the United States and its relationship to environmental inequality by asking two overarching questions: 1) how is income inequality distributed across metropolitan areas in the US and how have these patterns changed over time? and (2) how is metropolitan income inequality related to environmental inequality in the US? The systematic review (Chapter 2) shows that as income inequality has grown, there has been a commensurate growth in the literature, especially since the mid- to late-1990s. Researchers from a multitude of disciplines have sought to further our understanding of income inequality, examining both the (i) causes of and (ii) consequences of rising inequality from a variety of perspectives. Indeed, the review finds that one of the hallmarks of the literature is a growing trend towards interdisciplinary and multidimensional approaches to the study of inequality as roughly half of the top journals publishing work on both the causes and consequences of inequality cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Findings also suggest there is a need for a better understanding of the dynamics of inequality at the metropolitan level.To shed light on these dynamics, this thesis uses the Census Bureau’s Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) to build a unique large-scale comparative dataset for 226 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the US (Chapter 3). In terms of our understanding of the drivers of metropolitan inequality, modeling results suggest that education has the strongest impact on rising inequality; metropolitan areas with greater educational dispersion typically have higher levels of inequality, while increasing educational differences within metropolitan areas drive internal growth in inequality. Racial segregation is also linked to increasing inter-metropolitan inequality; places with greater levels of segregation are more unequal, and deepening segregation within metropolitan areas increases inequality. On the consequences side, much of the literature has focused its efforts on understanding the health outcomes of inequality. Much less attention has been paid to the potential environmental outcomes of higher inequality, particularly from an inter-metropolitan comparative perspective. To this effect, the panel model results presented in Chapter 4 are mixed. On the one hand, the examination of the long-run inequality-environment connection highlights a positive relationship between environmental degradation and inequality across US cities. On the other hand, short-term models show that while an increase in metropolitan inequality is associated with decreasing degradation, deepening segregation continues to be linked with increasing levels of pollution. These cross-city results lend further support to existing state-level and intra-metropolitan case study findings in the US. Future research should work toward obtaining better quality environmental degradation and pollution data at the metropolitan level in order to better parse out the connections between rising inequality and environmental outcomes"--
Author: Rachel A. Bouvier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Author: Klara Zwickl
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 141
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Rising income and wealth disparities are increasingly viewed as serious economic and social problems, but what are the environmental consequences of an unequal distribution of income and wealth? Are low income neighborhoods disproportionately negatively affected by pollution exposure, and does economic inequality thus manifest itself in environmental inequality? Are poor or unequal communities less successful in collectively organizing local environmental improvements and does inequality thus increase pollution exposure for all residents? This dissertation provides some empirical evidence on these questions. Chapter 1 analyzes regional variations in environmental disparities in US cities. Using geographic micro-data from EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators on industrial air pollution exposure and socio-economic data from the US Census at the blockgroup-level, we find strong empirical evidence for environmental disparities by income and race/ethnicity in US cities. However, we also find some striking regional variations in the magnitude in cities across the country. A finding that stands out across regions is that race and ethnicity are stronger predictors for air pollution exposure in the poorer half of neighborhoods in US cities. Chapter 2 investigates if neighborhood inequality affects the neighborhood's organizing capacities for local environmental improvements, using census tract-level data on industrial air pollution from EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators and income and demographic variables from the American Community Survey and EPA's Smart Location Database. Estimating a spatial model of pollution exposure, we find evidence that overall neighborhood inequality - as measured by the ratio between the fourth and the second income quintile or the neighborhood Gini coefficient - increases local exposure, whereas a concentration of top incomes reduces local exposure. Chapter 3 analyzes the socio-demographic correlates of proximity to fracking wells in five US states. The geocoded fracking well data were merged with blockgroup-level socio-economic variables from the American Community Survey and the Smart Location database; the socio-economic characteristics of neighborhoods with increased proximity to fracking activity were compared. I find that racial and ethnic minorities disproportionately live near fracking wells, and that educational attainments decline with proximity to fracking activity. However, there are substantial regional variations in these patterns.
Author: Lucas Chancel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Chapter I, entitled “Indian income inequality dynamics, 1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?” , discusses the methodological issues at stake when reconstructing historical income inequality series in a country as populated as India, but with very scarce data. The chapter shows that despite many important data limitations, one can combine tax data, surveys and national accounts in a systematic manner to reconstruct income inequality estimates robust to a wide range of alternative strategies. In the case of India, the results are striking as they reveal that income inequality is currently at its highest level since the creation of the Indian Income tax in 1922. The top 1% capture more than 22% of national income today, up from 6% in the mid-1980s, when the top 1% captured about 6% of total income. Chapter II, entitled “Building a global income distribution brick by brick” , builds on chapter I (and many other similar endeavors carried out by my colleagues at the WIL) to construct a global distribution of income based on a systematic combination of tax, survey data and national accounts. Our results are notable as some go against preconceived ideas on globalization and its impacts on economic inequality. In particular, we show that the global top 1% captured twice as much global income growth as the bottom 50% since 1980. We demonstrate that inequality increased, rather than decreased between world individuals since 1980, despite strong growth in the emerging world. In other words, rising inequality within countries was stronger than the effect of reduced inequality between countries since 1980. Looking into the future, the chapter also reveals that under “Business as Usual”, global inequality is likely to further rise (despite strong growth in emerging regions) contrary to what has been argued in academic and public debates on the matter. The Appendices to the chapter present the details of the method and reveal that our results are robust alternative strategies to account for missing data at the country level.How to move from global income inequality to global environmental inequality? A first step is to understand the role of income and non-income drivers of individual pollution levels within countries. This is the work that is discussed in Chapter III, entitled “Are younger generations higher carbon emitters than their elders?” , which focuses on the determinants of individual level CO2 emissions and focus on the role of income, technology and other factors, such as date of birth. We show that the French baby-boom generation emitted relatively more CO2 than their parents and their children, throughout their lifetime (about 20% more direct CO2 emissions). This is due to a combination of income, technological lock-in and cultural effects. Chapter IV, entitled “Carbon and inequality: From Kyoto to Paris” , builds on the results obtained in the previous chapters to construct a global distribution of carbon emissions. At the time of writing this chapter, global income inequality estimates presented in Chapter II were not available, so we had to rely on work done by other researchers to obtain global income series (Lakner and Milanovic, 2015). These were corrected with tax data and then used to reconstruct a global carbon emissions database. We show that the top 10% emitters account for about 45% of global emissions today and that twenty years ago, global inequality of carbon emissions was essentially a between-country inequality phenomena. Today, the situation is being reversed as within-country emissions inequality accounts for as much of global emissions inequality as the between-country dimension. On the basis of our results, we propose schemes to better share contributions to climate adaptation funds. The history of climate negotiations shows the extreme difficulty to implement any kinds of allocation rules to share a climate burden.
Author: Ms.Era Dabla-Norris
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513547437
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 39
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This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309452961
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 583
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Book Description
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Author: United States. Department of Health and Human Services. Task Force on Black and Minority Health
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Author: Andrew Carnegie
Publisher: Gray Rabbit Publishing
ISBN: 9781515400387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 34
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Book Description
Before the 99% occupied Wall Street... Before the concept of social justice had impinged on the social conscience... Before the social safety net had even been conceived... By the turn of the 20th Century, the era of the robber barons, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) had already accumulated a staggeringly large fortune; he was one of the wealthiest people on the globe. He guaranteed his position as one of the wealthiest men ever when he sold his steel business to create the United States Steel Corporation. Following that sale, he spent his last 18 years, he gave away nearly 90% of his fortune to charities, foundations, and universities. His charitable efforts actually started far earlier. At the age of 33, he wrote a memo to himself, noting ..".The amassing of wealth is one of the worse species of idolatry. No idol more debasing than the worship of money." In 1881, he gave a library to his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland. In 1889, he spelled out his belief that the rich should use their wealth to help enrich society, in an article called "The Gospel of Wealth" this book. Carnegie writes that the best way of dealing with wealth inequality is for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner, arguing that surplus wealth produces the greatest net benefit to society when it is administered carefully by the wealthy. He also argues against extravagance, irresponsible spending, or self-indulgence, instead promoting the administration of capital during one's lifetime toward the cause of reducing the stratification between the rich and poor. Though written more than a century ago, Carnegie's words still ring true today, urging a better, more equitable world through greater social consciousness.
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309133181
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 536
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Book Description
The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.
Author: Rémi Genevey
Publisher: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
ISBN: 8179935302
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
The reduction of inequalities within and between countries stands as a policy goal, and deserves to take centre stage in the design of the Sustainable Development Goals agreed during the Rio+20 Summit in 2012.The 2013 edition of A Planet for Life represents a unique international initiative grounded on conceptual and strategic thinking, and – most importantly – empirical experiments, conducted on five continents and touching on multiple realities. This unprecedented collection of works proposes a solid empirical approach, rather than an ideological one, to inform future debate.The case studies collected in this volume demonstrate the complexity of the new systems required to accommodate each country's specific economic, political and cultural realities. These systems combine technical, financial, legal, fiscal and organizational elements with a great deal of applied expertise, and are articulated within a clear, well-understood, growth- and job-generating development strategy.Inequality reduction does not occur by decree; neither does it automatically arise through economic growth, nor through policies that equalize incomes downward via ill conceived fiscal policies. Inequality reduction involves a collaborative effort that must motivate all concerned parties, one that constitutes a genuine political and social innovation, and one that often runs counter to prevailing political and economic forces.
