Author: Emmanuel Farhi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
We explore steady-state inequality in an intergenerational model with altruistically linked individuals who experience privately observed taste shocks. When the welfare function depends only on the initial generation, efficiency requires immiseration: inequality grows without bound and everyone's consumption converges to zero. We study other efficient allocations in which the welfare function values future generations directly, placing a positive but vanishing weight on their welfare. The social discount factor is then higher than the private one, and for any such difference we find that consumption exhibits mean reversion and that a steady-state, cross-sectional distribution for consumption and welfare exists, with no one trapped at misery.
Author: Emmanuel Farhi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Inheritance and succession
Languages : en
Pages : 41
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Book Description
To what degree should societies allow inequality to be inherited? What role should estate taxation play in shaping the intergenerational transmission of welfare? We explore these questions by modeling altruistically-linked individuals who experience privately observed taste or productivity shocks. Our positive economy is identical to models with infinite-lived individuals where efficiency requires immiseration: inequality grows without bound and everyone's consumption converges to zero. However, under an intergenerational interpretation, previous work only characterizes a particular set of Pareto-efficient allocations: those that value only the initial generation's welfare. We study other efficient allocations where the social welfare criterion values future generations directly, placing a positive weight on their welfare so that the effective social discount rate is lower than the private one. For any such difference in social and private discounting we find that consumption exhibits mean-reversion and that a steady-state, cross-sectional distribution for consumption and welfare exists, where no one is trapped at misery. The optimal allocation can then be implemented by a combination of income and estate taxation. We find that the optimal estate tax is progressive: fortunate parents face higher average marginal tax rates on their bequests. Keywords: Inequality, Altruism, Private Information, Immiseration, Social Discounting, Optimal Taxation, Estate Taxes, Dynamic Programming. JEL Classifications: C61, C62, D30, D63, D64, D82, H21, H23, H24, H43.
Author: Stéphane Zuber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 35
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Book Description
The discounted utilitarian criterion for infinite horizon social choice has been criticized for treating generations unequally. We propose an extended rank-discounted utilitarian (ERDU) criterion instead. The criterion amounts to discounted utilitarianism on non-decreasing streams, but it treats all generations impartially: discounting becomes the mere expression of intergenerational inequality aversion. We show that more inequality averse ERDU societies have higher social discount rates when future generations are better-off. We apply the ERDU approach in two benchmark economic growth models and prove that it promotes sustainable policies that maximize discounted utilitarian welfare.
Author: Amanda Machin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3658116633
Category : Social Science
Languages : de
Pages : 418
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Book Description
The contributions in this book highlight, contextualize and analyze different aspects of social inequality. What are the various cause and effects of inequality? How have these changed over recent decades? Which social policies might be best able to intervene? Written by authors from a variety of disciplines and geographical regions, these contributions provide a rich account of inequality within contemporary society. The role of the state, the media and the market in exacerbating and alleviating patterns of equality are all accessed alongside analysis of changing patterns of exclusion and hierarchy.
Author: Scott Sernau
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1544309325
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425
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Book Description
Social Inequality in a Global Age examines systems of inequality in the U.S. based on race, class, gender and sexuality, as well as the dynamics of power and privilege. While the focus is on U.S., the the book discusses the interplay of systems of inequality in the U.S, and the changing global economy.
Author: Kenneth Arrow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069119033X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
Most Americans strongly favor equality of opportunity if not outcome, but many are weary of poverty's seeming immunity to public policy. This helps to explain the recent attention paid to cultural and genetic explanations of persistent poverty, including claims that economic inequality is a function of intellectual ability, as well as more subtle depictions of the United States as a meritocracy where barriers to achievement are personal--either voluntary or inherited--rather than systemic. This volume of original essays by luminaries in the economic, social, and biological sciences, however, confirms mounting evidence that the connection between intelligence and inequality is surprisingly weak and demonstrates that targeted educational and economic reforms can reduce the income gap and improve the country's aggregate productivity and economic well-being. It also offers a novel agenda of equal access to valuable associations. Amartya Sen, John Roemer, Robert M. Hauser, Glenn Loury, Orley Ashenfelter, and others sift and analyze the latest arguments and quantitative findings on equality in order to explain how merit is and should be defined, how economic rewards are distributed, and how patterns of economic success persist across generations. Moving well beyond exploration, they draw specific conclusions that are bold yet empirically grounded, finding that schooling improves occupational success in ways unrelated to cognitive ability, that IQ is not a strong independent predictor of economic success, and that people's associations--their neighborhoods, working groups, and other social ties--significantly explain many of the poverty traps we observe. The optimistic message of this beautifully edited book is that important violations of equality of opportunity do exist but can be attenuated by policies that will serve the general economy. Policy makers will read with interest concrete suggestions for crafting economically beneficial anti-discrimination measures, enhancing educational and associational opportunity, and centering economic reforms in community-based institutions. Here is an example of some of our most brilliant social thinkers using the most advanced techniques that their disciplines have to offer to tackle an issue of great social importance.
Author: D. Stanley Eitzen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317257588
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
This book offers an up-to-date portrait of the realities of social class and its consequences in the United States today, focusing on the increasing inequality gap; the shrinking middle class; the myth and realities of social mobility; the consequences of class for work, health care, education, the justice system, war, and the environment; and progressive solutions for reducing inequality and improving human life.
Author: Christian Gollier
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691148767
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Today, the judge, the citizen, the politician, and the entrepreneur are concerned with the sustainability of our development.
Author: Daniel Dorling
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1847427200
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
Few would dispute that we live in an unequal and unjust world, but what causes this inequality to persist? In the new paperback edition of this timely book, Daniel Dorling, a leading social commentator and academic, claims that in rich countries lnequality is no longer caused by not having enough resources to share, but by unrecognised and unacknowledged beliefs which actually propagate it. Based on significant research across a range of fields, Dorling argues that, as the five social evils identified by Beveridge at the dawn of the British welfare state (ignorance, want, idleness, squalor and disease) are gradually being eradicated, they are being replaced by five new tenets of injustice, that: elitism is efficient; exclusion is necessary; prejudice is natural; greed is good and despair is inevitable. In an informal yet authoritative style, Dorling examines who is most harmed by these injustices and why, and what happens to those who most benefit. With a new Foreword by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level, and a new Afterword by the author examining developments during 2010, this is hard-hitting and uncompromising in its call to action and continues to make essential reading for everyone concerned with social justice. Book jacket.
Author: Giles Atkinson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
