scholarly journals How Rising Income Inequality Threatens Access to the Legal System

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Abusive Relationships ◽  
Financial Fraud ◽  
Quality Improvements ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
Legal Interventions

Incentives that lead sellers to introduce quality improvements and cost-saving innovations in competitive markets also ensure that no opportunity to cheat consumers remains unexploited. That difficulty underlies many American laws. But many people lack the income necessary to pay for legal interventions against unjust treatment, preventing them from meeting basic needs, like protection against financial fraud and abusive relationships. Growing income inequality has made this justice gap worse by reducing public funds available for legal aid in real terms, while also making it more difficult for low-income people to make ends meet. Simple policy changes could ease both problems without sacrifices from anyone. Those who could afford tax increases necessary to pay for more social services, including competent legal representation for everyone, resist this step because they believe that it would make it harder to buy the special things they want. But that belief is incorrect because the supply of special things is limited. The ability to bid successfully for them is unaffected by higher taxes, which do not affect relative purchasing power.

scholarly journals Inequality, policy polarization and the income gap in turnout

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882110119
Author(s):  
Matthew Polacko
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Income Gap ◽  
Income Groups ◽  
Logistic Regressions ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Previous research into the relationship between income inequality and turnout inequality has produced mixed results, as consensus is lacking whether inequality reduces turnout for all income groups, low-income earners, or no one. Therefore, this paper builds on this literature by introducing supply-side logic, through the first individual-level test of the impact that income inequality (moderated by policy manifesto positions) has on turnout. It does so through multilevel logistic regressions utilizing mixed effects, on a sample of 30 advanced democracies in 102 elections from 1996 to 2016. It finds that higher levels of income inequality significantly reduce turnout and widen the turnout gap between rich and poor. However, it also finds that when party systems are more polarized, low-income earners are mobilized the greatest extent coupled with higher inequality, resulting in a significantly reduced income gap in turnout. The findings magnify the negative impacts income inequality can exert on political behavior and contribute to the study of policy offerings as a key moderating mechanism in the relationship.

A Rising Tide Drowns Unstable Boats: How Inequality Creates Homelessness

2021 ◽  
Vol 693 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-45
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Byrne ◽  
Benjamin F. Henwood ◽  
Anthony W. Orlando
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Housing Prices ◽  
Community Level ◽  
Crowding Out ◽  
Rental Market ◽  
Home Prices ◽  
Collateral Effect ◽  
Local Policies ◽  
Low Income Households

Is income inequality a driver of homelessness at the community level? We theorize that inequality affects homelessness both by crowding out low-income households from the rental market (what we call an “income channel”) and by causing home prices to rise (a “price channel”). We construct a dataset of information on inequality, homelessness, rent burden, and housing prices in 239 communities from 2007 to 2018 and use it to assess the income inequality–homelessness relationship. Our results suggest that income inequality is a significant driver of community homelessness and that the “income channel” is the more likely mechanism through which homelessness is created. We argue that broader policy efforts to reduce income inequality are likely to have the collateral effect of reducing homelessness, and we discuss the need for national and local policies to help low-income households afford housing.

Social security, income inequality and growth

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
GILLES LE GARREC
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Pension System ◽  
Industrial Countries ◽  
Lifetime Income ◽  
Actuarial Fairness ◽  
Retirement Systems ◽  
Pension Benefits ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractIn most industrial countries, public pension systems redistribute from workers to retired people, not from high-income to low-income earners. They are close actuarial fairness. However, they are not all equivalent. In particular, some pension benefits are linked to full lifetime average earnings, while others are only linked to partial earnings history. In the latter case, we then show in this article that an actuarially fair pay-as-you-go pension system can both reduce lifetime income inequality and enhance economic growth. We also shed light on the dilemma between inequality and economic growth in retirement systems: greater progressivity results in less lifetime inequlity but also less growth.

Cripping the Welfare Queen

Social Text ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-101
Author(s):  
Jina B. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Low Income ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Queer Of Color Critique ◽  
Public Resource ◽  
Welfare Queen

Abstract Drawing together feminist- and queer-of-color critique with disability theory, this essay offers a literary-cultural reframing of the welfare queen in light of critical discourses of disability. It does so by taking up the discourse of dependency that casts racialized, low-income, and disabled populations as drains on the state, reframing this discourse as a potential site of coalition among antiracist, anticapitalist, and feminist disability politics. Whereas antiwelfare policy cast independence as a national ideal, this analysis of the welfare mother elaborates a version of disability and women-of-color feminism that not only takes dependency as a given but also mines the figure of the welfare mother for its transformative potential. To imagine the welfare mother as a site for reenvisioning dependency, this essay draws on the “ruptural possibilities” of minority literary texts, to use Roderick A. Ferguson’s coinage, and places Sapphire's 1996 novel Push in conversation with Jesmyn Ward's 2011 novel Salvage the Bones. Both novels depict young Black mothers grappling with the disabling context of public infrastructural abandonment, in which the basic support systems for maintaining life—schools, hospitals, social services—have become increasingly compromised. As such, these novels enable an elaboration of a critical disability politic centered on welfare queen mythology and its attendant structures of state neglect, one that overwrites the punitive logics of public resource distribution. This disability politic, which the author terms crip-of-color critique, foregrounds the utility of disability studies for feminist-of-color theories of gendered and sexual state regulation and ushers racialized reproduction and state violence to the forefront of disability analysis.

scholarly journals Economic Growth and Income Inequality in Developing Countries

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 79-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morteza Nemati ◽  
Ghasem Raisi
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Poverty Eradication ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Selection Of

Nowadays, improvement in income distribution and poverty eradication and hence low inequality are served as the main objectives of economic and social development strategy even prior than primary tasks of governments. to manifest importance of income distribution, some economists adopt income inequality and income distribution in society as criteria for economic system of the community, although these criteria and measures are theoretical for the economic system and this varies from the perspective of different people, however, it denotes on  importance of income distribution among individuals. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of economic growth on income inequality in the selection of low-income developing countries.To this end, using panel data and data for 28 developing countries over the period 1990-2010 the relationship between GDP and the Gini coefficient was examined. The results indicate that as per hypothesis Kuznets in the early stages of growth, income inequality increases and then it declines in later stage.

scholarly journals Income Inequality Affects the Psychological Health of Only the People Facing Scarcity

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (12) ◽  
pp. 1911-1921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Sommet ◽  
Davide Morselli ◽  
Dario Spini
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Psychological Health ◽  
National Income ◽  
World Values Survey ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status

Following the status-anxiety hypothesis, the psychological consequences of income inequality should be particularly severe for economically vulnerable individuals. Oddly, however, income inequality is often found to affect vulnerable low-income and advantaged high-income groups equally. We argue that economic vulnerability is better captured by a financial-scarcity measure and hypothesize that income inequality primarily impairs the psychological health of people facing scarcity. First, repeated cross-sectional international data (from the World Values Survey: 146,034 participants; 105 country waves) revealed that the within-country effect of national income inequality on feelings of unhappiness was limited to individuals facing scarcity (≈25% of the World Values Survey population). Second, longitudinal national data (Swiss Household Panel: 14,790 participants; 15,595 municipality years) revealed that the within-life-course effect of local income inequality on psychological health problems was also limited to these individuals (< 10% of the Swiss population). Income inequality by itself may not be a problem for psychological health but, rather, may be a catalyst for the consequences of financial scarcity.

scholarly journals Equitable Growth and Poverty Alleviation: Lessons Learned from Korean Experience

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Chanyong Park ◽  
Khalid Ikram
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Absolute Poverty ◽  
Assistance Program ◽  
Rapid Economic Growth ◽  
The Government

This case study analyzed how Korea achieved rapid economic growth with i.t1ere-JSing equity and poverty aJlcviarion. Korean GDP per capita increased 110 times and absolute poverty rate dccn.:ased from 48.3 percent to 9.8 percent l:x:tween 196 l and 2001. Ir is true to say in rhe Korean case that the most efiecrive measure in reduction of the absolute pwerty level has been to make the economic pie biggcr. It is called growth-firsr~istrihution-larcr principle and brought abJut economic success hy overcoming a sc:vere shortage of natural endowments. TI1e Korean government prioritized certain development-led industries in order to accelerate economic μ;ro\\•th. It was called '"imbalanced development strate,gy" and assessed as being more effective than "balanced development strategy" within the limited budget for ernnomic development. Although income inequality became aggravated Jue to the grmvrh-first polity and imbalanced strate,gy, the sizl' of the economic pie increased drastically. The income levels of middle and low income households increased to such an extent that much income inequality could l:x: rolernted. le can be said that in Korea. rapid economic growth raised welfare levels during rhe period between the l 960s and the 1990s even as income inequality worsened. Korea ran into serious economic difficulties in late 1997. The poverty rates rose sharply from 7.67 rercem in 19'-)7 to 14.28 pen:ent in ·19'-)8. TI1e Korean govemrnenr w1dertook various anti-poverty programs designed to ease the impan of ma-.s lay-offS by implementing a new public assistance program and expanded the coverage of sx·ial insuranu.c:. In addition, hwnan resource development programs \Vere intrOOuced thar enhanced the access of the vulnerable class to the labor market by laying stress on labor welfare, raking mea,ures to protect irregtUar employees, and extending the application of the minimum wage system to all industries. Thanks to these efforts of the government, the p.>verty rates have decreased since 1999. 1bis study has led us to six tentative but useful lessons learned from the Korean success to lx applied to ocher developing countries: establishment of a clear objective of development and. the cornmirmenr of authorities; r,crn.ptive sdt·ction of rtprcscntative kx:omotive engines for rapid economic gro¥.-th and properly designed management; lx.'St investment in human rt'Source development; fair land reform and rural development; job creation and expansion of employment; and building-up of country's capacity to implement plans and projects expeditiously within budgeted costs.

scholarly journals Broadband Internet and Income Inequality

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georges V. Houngbonon ◽  
Julienne Liang
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Internet Access ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Broadband Internet ◽  
Instrumental Variable Estimation ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Digital technologies like the Internet can affect income inequality through increased demand for employment in manual and abstract jobs and reduced demand for employment in routine jobs. In this paper, we combine city-level income distribution and jobs data with broadband data from France to investigate the impact of broadband Internet access on income inequality. Using an instrumental variable estimation strategy, we find that broadband Internet reduces income inequality through increased employment in manual jobs. These effects increase with the availability of skilled workers and are significant in cities with a large service sector or high-speed Internet access. Further, the diffusion of broadband Internet comes with relatively greater benefits in low-income cities compared to high-income cities. Several robustness checks support these findings.

Stock market development and income inequality

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athanasios Tsagkanos
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Stock Market ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Market Development ◽  
Rate System ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Stock Market Development ◽  
Tax Rate ◽  
Indirect Relationship

Purpose The purpose of this paper, in contrast to other studies, is to examine an indirect relationship in terms of the effect of income inequality with stock market development in countries South of the Euro-zone during the period 2002-2013. Design/methodology/approach The author adopts a new econometric method, the Improved Augmented Regression Method, to obtain bias-reduced and stationary-corrected estimators. Findings The results reveal a negative relationship that puts into doubt the recovery of growth. Originality/value The new econometric methodology leads to a novel suggested policy on the need for reforms adopting a low-income tax rate system and reinforcement of export-oriented productivity. This conclusion is strengthened by the respective relationship in USA.

Mubarak and the Islamists: Why Did the “Honeymoon” End?

2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hesham Al-Awadi
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
The State ◽  
Policy Changes

This article argues that the reasons behind Egyptian President Husni Mubarak's policy changes towards moderate Islamists was based on their ability to provide social services via an organized network of contacts. The outcome of this was that Islamists gained informal legitimacy from society but not from the state. This legitimacy was politicized to impel the state officially to recognize the Islamists, but instead of conceding to Islamist pressures, the state launched an offensive campaign to uproot their influence.

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