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Call for Papers for the IARIW-TNBS Conference on "Measurement of Income, Wealth and Well-being in Africa" October 7-9, 2021, Arusha, Tanzania The International Association for Research in Income, Wealth (IARIW), in partnership with the Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics (TNBS) will host a conference on "Measurement of Income, Wealth, Well-being in Africa" October 7-9, 2021, in Arusha, Tanzania. There is no registration fee for the conference, but all delegates, must be IARIW members, either through individual or institutional membership, or join the IARIW Delegates are responsible for their own travel and hotel costs. [Extracted from the article]

China's social safety net is still underdeveloped, hence family support in the form of intergenerational transfers often serves as a substitute for the public transfer system. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this paper finds that both upstream inter‐vivos transfers (from children to parents) and downstream inter‐vivos transfers (from parents to children) are prevalent in urban China. Moreover, the relative income status of the parent and children has an impact on inter‐vivos transfers. To investigate what economic factors generate the observed patterns of inter‐vivos transfers, this paper adopts a general equilibrium life‐cycle model in which overlapping generations are altruistically linked and calibrates the model to match data from urban China. Counterfactual experiments of removing one source of economic risk or modifying the social security replacement rate from the baseline model at a time reveal that intergenerational transfers mainly serve as informal insurance against the income risk of the children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the COVID recession and the large fiscal policy response by modelling scenarios using a macro‐econometric model. The COVID recession mainly arose from lower household consumption of certain services under COVID social distancing. The fiscal response to compensate for income losses in those service industries meant that unemployment was around 2 percentage points lower for 3 years than otherwise would have been the case. However, there was over‐compensation: for every $1 of income the private sector lost under COVID, fiscal policy provided $2 of compensation. Following the end of social distancing, the aftereffects of over‐compensation and over‐prolonged loose monetary policy are modelled to have generated excess demand that temporarily added up to 3 percentage points to the annual inflation rate. Also, three forms of over‐compensation in the JobKeeper program that led the fiscal response created disincentive effects and inequities. The primary lesson for future pandemics is that fiscal policy should compensate, but not over‐compensate, for income losses, both in aggregate and at the program level. The secondary lesson is that monetary policy needs to take more account of the stimulus already provided by the fiscal response, so that interest rates do not remain very low for too long. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Microenterprises are very small businesses requiring little capital and can be an employment pathway for people with intellectual disabilities. This systematic review aims to identify the facilitators, barriers and outcomes from microenterprise. Method: Web of Science, Scopus, EconLit, PsycINFO and ProQuest were searched to identify peer‐reviewed studies on microenterprises owned by people with intellectual disability published up to and including 1 October 2019. Results: A total of 1080 papers were independently screened by two reviewers. Six papers met the inclusion criteria. Barriers included lack of access to business expertise and resources, and the tension between growing microenterprises and maintaining eligibility for welfare payments. Formal and informal supports were key facilitators. Outcomes experienced included additional income, skills development, increased confidence and engagement in meaningful activities. Conclusion: Additional research is required to develop an evidence base which may support investment in this employment pathway, making microenterprise more accessible to people with intellectual disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies welfare gains from trade in a tractable model with a nonhomothetic preference over product quality. We show that the welfare changes due to trade shocks are unequal across consumers and derive a parsimonious formula to measure these welfare changes as in Arkolakis et al. (2012, American Economic Review, 102, 94–130). We find that the welfare changes are larger for consumers with lower income. Moreover, this paper shows that the welfare implications are different between a change in (iceberg‐type) variable trade cost and a change in tariff when tariff revenue matters. More importantly, we show that the difference varies across consumers with different income levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper primarily aimed at examining the level, and determinants of financial inclusion in Tanzania, comparing it with other East African Region member countries using the Global Findex (2017) database. The study reports some insightful findings. The results show that, financial inclusion is less developed in Tanzania than in other East African countries contrary to expectations. According to expectations from development finance theories financial inclusion directly relates to economic development. However, Tanzania having better GDP than its neighbour countries ranks behind other countries with lower GDPs. One may say that weak financial system, inappropriate policy and poor financial instruments hamper significant effect of finance on growth. The paper argues that regardless of a significant economic growth reported in Tanzania inability of the financial system to reach majority of the population may be considered as a major reason behind the unexpected link between economic growth and financial inclusion. Furthermore, the study shows that financial inclusion is positively related to the income level and education level of the households, and negatively relates to gender. Moreover, a non‐linear relationship between age and financial inclusion is reported‐ that is the relation is positive at a certain age level, and change to negative at a higher age level.Consequently, the study recommends promoting equal participation in both labor and financial markets, and that East African's Governments to fully capture the dynamics of markets and track informal as well as formal economic activities to attract inclusive economy which will, ultimately, match with financial inclusion agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a mathematical model and empirical test, this paper explores the incentive of income for aspirations and its channels, forging links between theory and data. Results present evidence that income significantly inspires one's aspirations, and all conclusions still hold after overcoming the interference of potential endogenous issues. In terms of channels, the "aspirations window" (a set of similar perceivable individuals) and "bandwidth load" (the mental space to think, process problems, and come up with solutions) play the mediating role in the stimulation of money; that is, low incomes will make aspirations window narrower and bandwidth load heavier, which is a momentous force behind one's aspirations failure. This paper also enlightens income distribution and the construction of internal motivation mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses panel data for Canada from 1976 to 2018, across 10 provinces, to reassess the relationship between mortality rates and economic fluctuations. The key contribution of our paper lies in examining the extent to which this relationship is driven by the employment rate (extensive margin) versus average hours worked (intensive margin). We find evidence of procyclical mortality for females at the aggregate level; aggregate male mortality remains largely unaffected by economic fluctuations. Our findings also reveal temporal heterogeneity, as the extensive margin becomes the driving force for female mortality rates during the more recent period (1990 onwards). These findings remain robust when accounting for personal income and pollution. Finally, we find some support for a procyclical relationship for individuals in the working age groups, while mortality exhibits a countercyclical pattern for children (age 0 to 14) and the elderly (age 65 and above). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stakeholders require transparency that companies are conducting business sustainably, which can be provided through non‐financial disclosures. Businesses that act on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters can attain a competitive advantage. ESG has become necessary in the agricultural sector as agribusinesses are considered high‐impact companies. The lack of uniformity in reporting guidelines leads to inconsistent and overloading of information. The objective of this paper is to conduct an evaluation and comparison of the current ESG reporting practices of listed agribusinesses in South Africa, Australia, and Chile. To support the quality and quantity of reporting, the concept of materiality is addressed by recognising what is material to be disclosed to stakeholders. The study evaluates how agribusinesses have incorporated the proposed material topics of the new GRI 13 sector standard into their current reporting practices. A qualitative content analysis was done to identify the presence or absence of the 34 proposed material topics in their reports. The findings indicate a distinct lack of harmonisation in the agri‐food sector disclosures. Topics hardly mentioned included the rights of indigenous people, living income, and climate adaptation. Low disclosures of the keywords Climate adaptation with 3.3% and Climate resilience with 7.0% on average, for all three countries, were reported. It is recommended that the newly proposed GRI 13 sector standard must be implemented as companies can seize this opportunity for increased transparency and gain a strategic advantage. Emphasis on the materiality concept is needed as it connects with the stakeholder theory to disclose only important information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on recently‐available microdata from financial surveys, this paper presents harmonized indicators for household wealth, its components, and its determinants in four Latin American countries (Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay), using Spain as a comparison benchmark. The paper analyzes the relationship between wealth indicators and sociodemographic characteristics of household heads (age, education, gender, marital status). For Uruguay, we are also able to analyze wealth patterns and intergenerational mobility (inheritance, family businesses and parental education). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a detailed analysis of excess mortality during the 'Spanish Flu' in a developing German economy and the effect of poverty and air pollution on pandemic mortality. The empirical analysis is based on a difference‐in‐differences approach using annual all‐cause mortality statistics at the parish level in the Kingdom of Württemberg. The paper complements the existing literature on urban pandemic severity with comprehensive evidence from mostly rural parishes. The results show that middle‐ and high‐income parishes had a significantly lower increase in mortality rates than low‐income parishes. Moreover, the mortality rate during the 1918 influenza pandemic was significantly higher in highly polluted parishes compared with least polluted parishes. Furthermore, the paper provides a detailed description of mortality statistics in Württemberg and new excess mortality rate estimates for Germany and its states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing forcibly displaced populations worldwide are adversely affecting the poorest host communities' livelihoods. Livelihood programmes can reduce this tension by addressing host communities' skills and capital constraints. In this paper, we examine the effect of a customised version of BRAC's Ultra‐Poor Graduation (UPG) programme on the livelihoods of the host communities of Rohingya refugees. We find that the programme increases labour supply in self‐employment of working‐age men and women, household income, food expenditure and productive asset. Further, we find some weak evidence that the programme decreases the tension between hosts and Rohingya refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1950s, Madagascar has experienced four constitutional changes and four crises of a political nature. In the present paper, we assess the economic effects of the 2009 Malagasy political crisis, which stands out from the three previous crises because of its suddenness and its duration. For this purpose, we use the synthetic control method, which involves determining the most credible counterfactual for the Malagasy economy from a subset of optimally weighted untreated countries. This empirical approach clearly shows that the output loss of this crisis is sizable, leading to a per capita income loss of around 25% 8 years after the start of the crisis. Sensitivity analyses applied to verify the robustness of our main result confirm that the effect of the 2009 Malagasy political crisis was unusually large. We then conduct an in‐depth analysis to understand the main mechanisms that explain this output loss. We confirm that investments are probably the main determinants explaining the output loss after the crisis. We believe that our approach reveals that political instability is one of the main constraints preventing Madagascar from prospering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Established in March 2020, the C19PRC Study monitors the psychological and socio‐economic impact of the pandemic in the UK and other countries. This paper describes the protocol for Wave 6 (August–September 2021). Methods: The survey assessed: COVID‐19 related experiences; experiences of common mental health disorders; psychological characteristics; and social and political attitudes. Adult participants from any previous wave (N = 3170) were re‐invited, and sample replenishment procedures helped manage attrition. Weights were calculated using a survey raking algorithm to ensure the on‐going original panel (from baseline) was nationally representative in terms of gender, age, and household income, amongst other factors. Results: 1643 adults were re‐interviewed at Wave 6 (51.8% retention rate). Non‐participation was higher younger adults, those born outside UK, and adults living in cities. Of the adults recruited at baseline, 54.3% (N = 1100) participated in Wave 6. New respondent (N = 415) entered the panel at this wave, resulting in cross‐sectional sample for Wave 6 of 2058 adults. The raking procedure re‐balanced the longitudinal panel to within 1.3% of population estimates for selected socio‐demographic characteristics. Conclusions: This paper outlines the growing strength of the publicly available C19PRC Study data for COVID‐19‐related interdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the core of poverty eradication is the need to eliminate that poverty that is persistent over time (chronic poverty). Unfortunately, traditional approaches to identifying chronic poverty require longitudinal data that is rarely available. In its absence, this paper proposes an alternative approach that only requires 1 year of cross‐sectional data on monetary and non‐monetary poverty. It puts forth two conjectures and contends that the combined profile of a household as both income poor and multidimensionally poor can be used as a proxy of that household being chronically income poor. To explore the viability of this approach, we use a probit model and longitudinal data for three Latin American countries to estimate households' probabilities of remaining in income poverty based on their past income and multidimensional poverty statuses. We find empirical support for the approach that is significant, consistent across countries, and robust to various controls and periods of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In periods of distress, observed and perceived income risk tends to rise. Does this heightened income risk affect monetary transmission? This paper first shows that in partial equilibrium, heightened income risk dampens the substitution effect of interest rate changes but amplifies the indirect income effect of wage changes. The effects are sizable in partial equilibrium. An increase in income risk consistent with heightened risk during recessions affects interest rate and wage responses by around one‐third. However, because income risk dampens the effects of interest rate changes but amplifies the effects of wage changes, its effect is weaker in general equilibrium, dampening monetary transmissions to consumption by around 11 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how multinational firms' internal debt financing affects high‐tax countries. It uses a dynamic small open economy model and takes into account that internal debt impacts both the multinational firms' investment decisions and the government's tax policy. The government has incentives to redistribute income from firm owners to workers. If the government's redistributive motive is not too strong, internal debt reduces welfare in the short term by decreasing tax revenues. However, debt financing stimulates capital accumulation and exerts a positive long‐term welfare impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that a unified analysis of consumption and production is required to understand the long‐run behavior of the U.S. labor share. First, using household data on the universe of consumer spending, I document that higher‐income households spend relatively more on labor‐intensive goods and services as a share of their total consumption. Interpreted as nonhomothetic preferences, this fact implies that economic growth increases the aggregate labor share through an income effect. Second, using disaggregated data on factor shares and capital intensities, I document that equipment‐intensive goods experienced relatively larger declines in their labor shares. Based on this finding, I estimate that capital and labor are gross substitutes, and that investment‐specific technical change reduces the labor share. Given the estimated elasticities, a parsimonious neoclassical model quantitatively matches the observed low‐frequency movements in the aggregate labor share since the 1950s, both its relative stability until about 1980 and its decline thereafter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household financial stress is a persistent problem that can be exacerbated by shocks such as the COVID‐19 pandemic. This paper finds that assets are more important than income for explaining financial stress using the Household Expenditure Survey, conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Households in the bottom quintile for net assets are more likely to experience many dimensions of financial stress, with a magnitude of approximately 3 percentage points in most cases. Total income often has no identifiable impact on financial stress, all else equal, although the component of income based on investments may be a better predictor of financial stress. Further, there is a positive relationship between liabilities and financial stress. In addition, substantial financial stress is observable for recipients of payments for unemployment or disability, with lower impacts suggested for some other welfare groups. Three policy options are refining asset tests to provide higher benefits for low‐wealth households, raising benefits for particular welfare types including for those receiving unemployment and disability payments, and promoting financial literacy to avoid excessive liabilities. Financial stress likelihood varies across households. Those receiving unemployment or disability benefits are more likely to experience financial stress. Assets are more important than income in explaining financial stress. Refined policies for financial stress can therefore include higher benefits for some welfare types and greater reliance on assets in means testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social geography of cities is argued to be changing globally; rising economic inequality is associated with increasing segregation. Yet, income inequality has been predominantly mobilised through national and regional imaginaries. In cities, a number of factors such as the normative policy motivation to intervene in 'disadvantaged' neighbourhoods, have led to (concentrations of) poverty becoming prioritised in empirical studies of household income. This paper addresses a gap in understanding the relationship between local income inequality and the segregation of high‐income households at the urban and neighbourhood scales in England and Wales. The results highlight that wealthier cities and districts (Cambridge, Winchester, and Rushcliffe in the Nottingham conurbation) have higher income inequality (Gini), but are less segregated (Index of Dissimilarity). Lower average income cities tend to be more segregated, due to self‐segregation of high‐income households into 'pockets of affluence.' These results confirm that high‐income households are the most segregated group in our sample, consistent with trends in global urban segregation patterns. The research also highlights just how prevalent low income is in urban neighbourhoods, making the case for high income as the designated minority population in segregation studies. In our detailed case study of Nottingham, income homogeneity is typical of areas with high deprivation. Neighbourhoods with a high Gini coefficient could be described as mixed income: the Gini is raised by the presence of high‐income households in urban neighbourhoods. We argue that the Gini therefore offers potential as an indicator of social mix in urban studies. These results are based on an experimental household income dataset released by the Office of National Statistics, with analysis of all core cities in England and Wales, alongside Derby, Leicester, Cambridge, Southampton, and Winchester, followed by a detailed case study of Nottingham (UK) and its extended suburban boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A perk of academic employment is the ability to earn additional income from non-university entities by consulting. Despite the availability of such work, the potential synergies with research, teaching, and extension, and the controversy sometimes surrounding it, there is surprisingly little research on the prevalence of outside consulting, the determinants of consulting, or the response of faculty to specific university consulting policies. To address these issues, this paper utilizes data from a nationwide survey of academic agricultural economists. We find that about 43% of the sample reported consulting activities in the year prior to the survey. Of those who consulted, 12% (or about $34,000) of their total household income on average comes from outside consulting activities. Income from consulting is positively correlated with having a research appointment, income earned from the university, and number of career published papers. We also document extensive heterogeneity across university consulting policies and perceptions of these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a comprehensive analysis of income inequality and income dynamics for Germany over the last two decades. Combining personal income tax and social security data allows us--for the first time--to offer a complete picture of the distribution of annual earnings in Germany. We find that cross-sectional inequality rose until 2009 for men and women. After the Great Recession, inequality continued to rise at a slower rate for men and fell slightly for women due to compression at the lower tail. We further document substantial gender differences in average earnings and inequality over the life cycle. While for men earnings rise and inequality falls as they grow older, many women reduce working hours when starting a family such that average earnings fall and inequality increases. Men's earnings changes are on average smaller than women's but are substantially more affected by the business cycle. During the Great Recession, men's earnings losses become magnified and gains are attenuated. Apart from recession years, earnings changes are significantly right-skewed reflecting the good overall state of the German labor market and increasing labor supply. In the second part of the paper, we study the distribution of total income including incomes of self-employed, business owners, and landlords. We find that total inequality increased significantly more than earnings inequality. Regarding income dynamics, entrepreneurs' income changes are more dispersed, less skewed, less leptokurtic, and less dependent on average past income than workers' income changes. Finally, we find that top income earners have become less likely to fall out of the top 1 and 0.1%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Global Repository of Income Dynamics (GRID) is a new open-access, crosscountry database that contains a wide range of micro statistics on income inequality, dynamics, and mobility. It has four key characteristics: it is built on micro panel data drawn from administrative records; it fully exploits the longitudinal dimension of the underlying data sets; it offers granular descriptions of income inequality and income dynamics for finely defined subpopulations; and it is designed from the ground up with the goals of harmonization and cross-country comparability. This paper introduces the database and presents a set of global trends in income inequality and income dynamics across the 13 countries that are currently in GRID. Our results are based on the statistics created for GRID by the 13 country teams who also contributed to this special issue with individual articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an agent‐based model in which taxpayers 'live' in a network and care about their social reputation. Individuals decide whether to pay or to evade taxes considering the expected economic net benefit and the reputational cost from tax evasion. Individuals differ in income and in the weight they attach to social reputation, which is updated by assessing the opinions shared in their reference group. The reference group contains individuals irrespective of their income (integrated society) or it is made up of peers belonging to the same income group (segregated society). We simulate the model in the two alternative settings to find the frequency distribution of taxpayers in a dataset of random networks. The results indicate that, in an integrated society, network conformity is reached and all individuals either evade or pay their taxes. Conversely, a segregated society might generate obstacles to the diffusion of opinions and, as a result, tax evasion and tax compliance might coexist. Lastly, we consider the effects of a social media campaign starring a celebrity financed by a fiscal authority to increase overall tax compliance by exploiting the diffusion dynamics in the network. We show that such a policy is more effective if the diffusion of opinions is not hindered by social segregation. In an integrated society, especially if income inequality is low, a celebrity's endorsement of tax compliance might nudge widespread socially responsible tax behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the government expenditure multiplier and the influence of agents' expectations and consumption choices thereupon in a pre‐existing estimated macroeconomic agent‐based model. If the simple consumption heuristic of the baseline model is replaced by inter‐temporal optimization subject to a budget constraint based on agents' estimations of future income, the multiplier becomes significantly smaller. When agents' beliefs about the effects of expenditure shocks are explicitly introduced, they can strongly increase or decrease the multiplier. If agents are allowed learn about the effects of government expenditure on their income from repeated shocks, they are able to correctly predict these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature on the floating population in Chinese cities has shed much light on their intention to stay in the city, while the empirical results have been highly controverted. This study performed a meta‐analysis to quantitatively examine the spatiotemporal variation in research foci and the changes in the characteristics of the floating population per se by synthesizing 152 peer‐reviewed papers on their intention of long‐term residence. Meta‐regression was performed to identify the main causes of the heterogeneous effects of typical determinants. The results firstly verified the strong and increasing intention of the floating population to stay in cities. Academic foci have changed significantly with the growing trend of family migration and the increasing relative attraction of large cities in central and western regions compared with the coastal megaregions over the past 15 years. Both consistency and changes in previous findings were identified and explained. Specifically, female, better education, higher income and longer living duration in host cities were confirmed as reliable indicators of stronger intention to stay in the city, while differences among results could be attributed mainly to the varying social conventions, living costs and changing thoughts of the floating population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on durable goods and their role in the measurement of living standards. The contribution of the paper is fourfold. First, we develop a unified framework to discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the methods used by welfare analysts to calculate the value of the services flowing from consumer durable goods—the acquisition approach, the rental equivalent approach, the user cost approach, and the opportunity cost approach. We conclude by endorsing the user cost approach. Second, we propose a new method to implement the user cost approach, dubbed the "economic life" depreciation model, which can be estimated with limited information, combining theoretical and practical advantages. Third, we examine some 200 official poverty assessment reports the world over, released between the early 2000s and the present day, and we document the gulf between theory and practice: overall, we find that the way durable goods are dealt with in welfare analysis is still highly inadequate. Fourth, we sketch a simple analytical framework to assess the distributional impact of different methods to estimate the consumption flow from durables. The main predictions of the model are tested using the 2012 Iraqi Household Income and Economic Survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper investigates the accumulation and distribution of retirement wealth in a dynastic model with earnings risks, longevity uncertainties, and borrowing constraints. It resolves the wealth indeterminacy problem across generations in dynastic families by introducing a transaction cost for intergenerational transfers. It captures the pattern of inter vivos transfers, the relationship between wealth and earnings, and wealth inequality in the US data. Social security lowers precautionary savings by redistributing income from families with high earnings or short‐lived parents to others, thus reducing investment, the growth rate in income per capita, inequality in retirees' consumption, and the wealth‐earnings correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper evaluates the impact of quantitative easing on income and wealth of individual euro area households. We first estimate the aggregate effects of a quantitative easing (QE) shock, identified by means of external instruments, in a multi‐country vector autoregression (VAR) model with unemployment, wages, gross operating surplus, interest rates, house prices, and stock prices. We then distribute the aggregate effects across households using a reduced‐form simulation on micro‐data, which captures the portfolio composition, the income composition, and the earnings heterogeneity channels of transmission. The earnings heterogeneity channel is important: QE compresses the income distribution because many households with lower incomes become employed. In contrast, monetary policy has only negligible effects on the Gini coefficient for wealth: While high‐wealth households benefit from higher stock prices, middle‐wealth households benefit from higher house prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship among education, knowledge, perception and disaster experience to investigate whether household disaster preparedness behaviour mitigates income losses. We employ instrumental variables approach and generate indigenous knowledge from a large‐scale dataset to examine responsiveness of disaster preparedness via unemployment and production. We identify disaster and climate knowledge perception as new determinant towards disaster risk reduction. Our findings suggest Disaster Preparedness Index (DPI) is almost 64% effective in mitigating household per capita net income loss in comparison with the mean via unemployment channel. We argue that informal education and community‐based training could bring more efficacies in this loss mitigation mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—one of America's largest antipoverty programs—has reached the poorest. We compute a novel measure of the floor of income, an estimated income level of the poorest individuals in society. We measure the floor with and without SNAP benefits included in family income using 29 years of Current Population Survey (CPS) data. We correct for underreporting of SNAP participation and benefits for a subset of years and examine alternative data to assess the robustness of our findings. The analysis reveals a long‐term decline in the income floor, whereas adding SNAP to income and correcting for underreporting has reversed this decline and lifted the income floor by more than 75% on average between 2011 and 2016. The declining floor and the remarkable increase in income for the poorest Americans from SNAP are not revealed by poverty headcounts, which focus on changes at the poverty threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploiting the development of special economic zones (SEZs) in China as a quasi‐natural experiment, this paper evaluates how such zones affect infant mortality. Difference‐in‐differences analysis reveals that SEZs significantly decrease the local infant mortality rate, and the impact is larger for male infants and infants with less‐educated mothers. Further studies show that the SEZs, which acts as an economic growth shock, improve infant survival by increasing the local income. Furthermore, there is no supportive evidence that the SEZs significantly alter either women's fertility‐associated behaviors or environmental pollution. These results highlight the previously ignored human capital‐related consequences of place‐based policies in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global rise of right‐wing populist [RWP] parties presents a major political concern. RWP parties' voters tend to be citizens who have either experienced or fear economic deprivation. Income change constitutes a viable measure of this deprivation. However, previous contributions examining effects of income change on support for RWP parties have yielded diverging conclusions. This paper challenges previous findings by incorporating considerations of gender and within‐household inequality. We hypothesise a negative relationship between, on the one hand, personal and household income change and, on the other hand, sympathy towards RWP parties. Furthermore, we expect to find a stronger association between personal income change and RWP sympathy among men. Moreover, we expect the relationship between household income change and RWP sympathy to differ between genders. Finally, we hypothesise that this gender disparity can be interpreted by considering who contributes most to the household income. All these hypotheses are grounded in gender socialisation and economic dominance theories. Analysing Dutch LISS longitudinal data spanning from 2007 to 2021 (N = 7,801, n = 43,954) through fixed‐effects multilevel linear regression models enables us to address various competing explanations. It appears that only for men, personal income change is negatively linked with sympathies towards RWP parties. However, considering who is the highest earner within households reveals that women are also affected by their personal income change if they earn the highest income. For both men and women, household income change is negatively linked with sympathies towards RWP parties. These results lend partial support to both the socialisation and economic dominance theories. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While emotional transmission is a well‐documented phenomenon, the contagion of happiness, specifically as a positive emotion, has received limited research attention. This study utilizes data from the 2015 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS2015) to analyse the effects of happiness contagion among different individual groups in urban communities. Findings indicate that individuals with positive personalities and social attitudes are more susceptible to happiness contagion. Regarding personal and job attributes, the elderly, the highly educated, the married, or people who are religious, have high incomes, work in non‐state‐owned enterprises, or work flexibly tend to receive more happiness from their neighbours. Moreover, residents living in economically developed areas exhibit a greater receptivity to happiness contagion. The paper discusses policy implications of the results. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Systematic reviews are considered the highest level of evidence that can help guide evidence‐informed decisions in nursing practice, education, and even health policy. Systematic review publications have increased from a sporadic few in 1980s to more than 10,000 systematic reviews published every year and around 30,000 registered in prospective registries. Methods: A cross‐sectional design and a variety of data sources were triangulated to identify the journals from which systematic reviews would be evaluated for adherence to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 reporting guidelines and scope. Specifically, this study used the PRISMA 2020 reporting guidelines to assess the reporting of the introduction, methods, information sources and search strategy, study selection process, quality/bias assessments, and results and discussion aspects of the included systematic reviews. Results: Upon review of the 215 systematic reviews published in 10 top‐tier journals in the field of nursing in 2019 and 2020, this study identified several opportunities to improve the reporting of systematic reviews in the context of the 2020 PRISMA statement. Areas of priority for reporting include the following key areas: (1) information sources, (2) search strategies, (3) study selection process, (4) bias reporting, (5) explicit discussion of the implications to policy, and lastly, the need for (6) prospective protocol registration. Discussion: The use of the PRISMA 2020 guidelines by authors, peer reviewers, and editors can help to ensure the transparent and detailed reporting of systematic reviews published in the nursing literature. Clinical Relevance: Systematic reviews are considered strong research evidence that can guide evidence‐based practice and even clinical decision‐making. This paper addresses some common methodological and process issues among systematic reviews that can guide clinicians and practitioners to be more critical in appraising research evidence that can shape nursing practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resurgence of inflation has been accompanied by a reversal of prospects of growth, with a prominent role assigned to the fall of households' purchasing power. Yet this real income effect of inflation surprises, independent of restrictive monetary policy, is not present in the standard New Keynesian models for monetary policy. The reason lies in the formulation of the consumption‐based "IS equation". The paper shows how the income effect can be introduced by reformulating the consumption function, with the consequence that it exerts an autonomus stabilization effect on inflation. The main monetary policy implications are examined by means of simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital financial inclusion has become an important way to reduce poverty and prevent poverty return; however, few studies examine the relationship between digital financial inclusion measurement with poverty return governance. Based on data from the 2017 China Household Financial Survey, we construct a digital financial inclusion indicator for micro‐households, and explore its impact on the risk of households returning to poverty and its mechanisms. Our findings suggest that digital financial inclusion can reduce the risk of Chinese families returning to poverty, and that it has heterogeneous effects on families and regions with different characteristics. The main function is to improve household income level by promoting entrepreneurship and employment, and to improve risk resistance by enhancing household financial market participation and household asset allocation. Further analysis shows that digital financial inclusion has structural effects, nonlinear effects, and substitution effects with private lending in poverty governance. This paper has implications for understanding and improving the poverty governance effectiveness of digital financial inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature has identified income, health status and social relationships as the most important predictors of subjective wellbeing (SWB). In addition, the literature has identified a non‐linear relationship between age and SWB, with a dip in SWB in midlife. Explanations of the non‐linear age–SWB relationship include the notion of unmet aspirations and the idea that people's emotional response to the drivers of SWB changes with age. Against this background, we use representative longitudinal data for Germany (1992–2019) with about 570,000 observations for more than 88,000 individuals aged 16–105 years to investigate if and how the association between SWB and its main predictors changes over the lifecycle. Using fixed effects estimation to control for cohort effects and unobserved personal characteristics, we find that the marginal effects of income and social relationships vary with age in a wave‐like fashion, while the positive marginal effect of good health status increases monotonically and progressively with age. Our results are similar for alternative measures of SWB (life satisfaction and living in misery), and for men and women separately. The age‐related changes in the importance of income and social relationships for SWB found in this paper help to explain the relationship between age and SWB found in previous literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilises the perspective of listed companies to explore the influence of decision‐making power allocation on labour income share and analyses the possible mechanisms. Utilising 16,650 firm‐year observations from both the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges between 2008 and 2021, the results show that decentralised decision‐making power can significantly improve the labour income share of enterprises. This result is more obvious in enterprises with non‐state‐owned property rights and low total factor productivity. Furthermore, decentralising enterprise decision‐making power reduces rent dissipation within the company, improves enterprise investment enthusiasm, increases investment in research and development, and promotes upgrading the labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vietnam has experienced a major land policy reform in recent decades, relaxing the previously imposed restrictions on land transfer and accumulation. This paper investigates the relationship between this agricultural land reform and changes in income inequality using a microdata‐based decomposition framework. Results show that agricultural land reform is one of the most important drivers of income growth among middle‐income households in Vietnam, and has contributed to a reduction in income inequality. However, the effect is highly heterogeneous, as it favors households with particular land types; it thus leads to an increase in income inequality in rural areas despite reducing such inequality in urban regions. The findings suggest that the policy effect of land restriction relaxation can be complex due to inequalities in new opportunities as well as the initial landholding distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines trends in working‐age labour market and disposable income inequalities in the United Kingdom from 1968 to 2021 using microdata harmonised with 16 other high‐income countries. In the UK, the 1980s was a period of rising labour market inequalities and inequality in disposable incomes. Since the 1980s, changes have been more modest. Changing hours of work and changes in family structure have been important for understanding trends in individual and household earnings inequalities, respectively. Tax and benefit reforms have also played an important role in driving disposable income inequalities, with notable redistribution towards low‐income households between 1997 and 2010. We also provide evidence on the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the UK. Disposable income inequality fell slightly as increases in state benefits during the pandemic boosted incomes of poorer households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finland is known for low income inequality by international comparison. In this paper we provide a long‐run perspective on inequalities in Finland, and show that inequality is higher in the 21st century compared with many previous decades. We discuss the drivers of inequality in more detail, focusing on wages, earnings, employment and education, and also social outcomes such as partner‐finding and family formation in the working‐age population. The collective wage‐setting system is a likely contributor to the relatively low and stable wage and earnings inequality among working indviduals. However, women fare worse in the labour market than men, despite having a higher education level on average. We also find that individuals who are out of work or have low education have a lower probability of finding a partner, indicating that social inequalities are linked with those in the labour market. Finally, we discuss the importance of redistribution as well as changes in tax legislation that have contributed to an increasing concentration of capital income, which has been an important factor in increasing households' disposable income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland has experienced rapid – if volatile – growth over the last three decades. While this performance looks less impressive when considered over a longer horizon and is better seen as belated convergence making up for lost time in the first 50 years of independence, this paper highlights an aspect of the Irish experience that does stand out as quite remarkable: how broad‐based and inclusive growth in household disposable income was. Drawing on over three decades of harmonised household survey data, we first show that income inequality fell substantially over this period, the product of disposable income growth that was stronger at the bottom than the middle or top of the distribution. We then tentatively suggest some important factors that might have contributed towards the patterns of growth experienced – including tax and transfer reforms, a rise in two‐earner couples and a fall in the average size of households – before concluding with some directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how income‐inequality promotes racial discrimination. When the influence of income is intergenerational, it generates a strong correlation between parental income status and the race that their children inherit. This makes parents' income statuses identifiable through applicants' races and enables employers to discriminate against the races of the low‐income group. Antidiscrimination policies may not be effective if they do not improve on income‐inequality. An effective means of reducing income‐inequality is to minimize the parental influence that causes inherited inequality. The implications of the discriminatory practice of legacy admissions are discussed in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies optimum currency area (OCA) theory to Southeast Asia to assess the potential for a monetary union in that region. We construct a panel of 10 Southeast Asian countries over the period 1990–2018 and apply the dynamic OLS estimator to quantify the costs and benefits of a potential OCA. A possible monetary union in Southeast Asia is vulnerable to asymmetric shocks, although the degree of specialisation has decreased and the openness index increased. Estimates confirm that both OCA criteria favour an increase in the region's income and FDI inflows and a reduction of its unemployment rate. However, inadequate labour mobility and stagnating intra‐trade shares are major obstacles in this regard, but if addressed they could benefit economic development and GDP per capita in the ASEAN region. We conclude that Southeast Asia is far from being an optimum currency area, but if it were to form a common currency area, the loss of economic sovereignty and its costs would be more than offset by the resulting monetary efficiency gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remittances have become one of the most important sources of household income in developing countries, empowering recipients to be more politically independent. Using a dynamic estimator and panel data for 84 developing countries over the 1982–2011 period, this paper investigates the effect that remittances have on political institutions. Controlling for country and time fixed effects and using an exogenous source of variation to instrument remittances, the baseline results show that remittances start having a positive effect on democratic institutions when remittances reach 22% of GDP. This evidence suggests that remittances can influence the relationship between recipients and political elites, providing incentives for recipient households to hold their political representatives more accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After accounting for top incomes missing from the Chinese Household Income Project, this paper examines the income inequality trend in China during the 21st century. Our analysis, which involves fitting the upper tail of the income distribution to a power‐law model, reveals that the authoritative income survey data miss 0.68% of the population and 6.19% of aggregate income in 2018. Despite the most recent survey data providing better coverage of top incomes, our correction is still crucial. The raw survey data indicate a consistently increasing Gini coefficient between 2002 and 2018, but the corrected index starts to decline from 2013. Meanwhile, the revised top 1% income share increases from 7.01% in 2002 to 7.89% in 2013 and then slightly decreases to 7.64% in 2018, while the revised top 10% income share stabilises at around 33% throughout the period. Notably, China's revised top 10% and top 50% income shares in 2018 are close to those of the United Kingdom but are considerably lower than those of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Excessive alcohol use is associated with non‐communicable diseases and social problems, such as work absence, financial problems and family violence. Expenditure and expenditure shares on alcohol are valuable measures to monitor financial activities on this risk behaviour. The aim of this paper is to report trends in alcohol expenditure in Australia over the last two decades. Methods: Data are from six waves of Australian Household Expenditure Surveys from 1984 to 2015–2016. We explored trends of alcohol expenditure among Australians and in different socio‐demographic groups in the last 30 years. We further examined changes of expenditure on different on‐ and off‐premises beverages over time. Results: Absolute alcohol expenditure has remained the same between the 1980s and 2016, after accounting for inflation. However, a declining trend in relative alcohol expenditure as a proportion of total household expenditure was found across nearly all demographic groups (e.g., sex, age, employment, household income), except for women aged 45–54, who showed an increasing trend of alcohol expenditure after 1998–1999. Discussion and Conclusions: The current study shows declines in relative alcohol expenditure, which may reflect declines in alcohol's relative importance within the elements of the person's lifestyle they need to pay for and/or increased awareness of alcohol's health and social harms. Further longitudinal analysis should explore additional predictors of household expenditure on alcohol. Results suggest that current bi‐annual indexation increases in alcohol tax should account for increases in income to ensure the effectiveness of pricing. Moreover, attention is needed to address drinking among middle‐aged females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender differences in economic outcomes are important topics in social science research. However, the study of gender differences among economic elites—"the top one percent"—has received surprisingly little attention, likely also due to a lack of empirical data. This paper investigates gender differences in individual and household income among the top one percent of individual monthly net incomes and top two percent of net household incomes using data from the German Microcensus from 2006 to 2016 covering more than 3.3 million individuals. I find that women account for only around 14% of the one percent in individual incomes. Additionally, regarding the household level, women's incomes are sufficient to achieve two percent status in fewer than 10% of all households. Both numbers did hardly change over the decade from 2006 to 2016. Furthermore, women's pathways to belonging to a high‐income household are far more dependent on their partner's education and employment status than men's. Overall, the findings thus show dramatic gender differences among the German economic elite that do not narrow over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]