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The article examines the relationship between the public policy preferences of citizens and policy implementation and whether public policy is almost solely responsive to the preferences of rich people, and how such a dynamic may negatively impact the middle class and lower class and its significance to representative government. The article examines the public policy preferences of the rich and middle class and the circumstances surrounding public policy wins for each group, and also discusses the public policy preferences of the poor.

The article discusses the inequality of the poor and lower-middle class people in New York City. It states that the problems caused by economic inequality have been derive from how Americans segregate themselves by wealth and income. It notes that the addressing of the inequality in class-stratified city such as New York is mainly operated by wealthy and powerful is no easy task and the administration of New York Mayork Bill de Blasio does not have roadmap to follow. It mentions that informing about the reality of poverty may be the first step to addressing inequality.

In this paper, we document trends in credit use across income groups in the period surrounding the Great Recession. We investigate trends in access to different credit markets, including mortgages, home equity, automobiles, and student loans. We disentangle growth rates of new market entrants from the aggregates and analyze overall as well as within-county growth rate differentials across income strata. Our findings may provide insight into the financial well-being of different income groups in the context of the Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on politics and economic conditions in Russia, focusing on the geographic and sociodemographic extent of support for political reform and democratization among the Russian public. It notes that many Russians of varied classes and from locations outside the major cities have engaged in specific protests around matters such as pension cuts, but not in more general human rights or pro-democracy demonstrations, and suggests a link between this pattern and the country's sharp economic inequality. Topics include redistributive economic policies, the risks that political reforms might pose to the economic interests of poor, middle-income, and rich Russians respectively.

Abstract: The bi-directional long run relationship between renewable energy consumption and GDP growth has been investigated in high income, upper middle income, lower middle income, and high income countries. To achieve this goal, the fully modified OLS was utilized. The results revealed that 79% of the countries have a positive bi-directional long run relationship between renewable energy consumption and GDP growth. This represents the feedback hypothesis. On the other hand, 19% of the countries showed no long run relationship between the variables. This represents the neutrality hypothesis. Besides, 2% of the countries showed a one way long run relationship from GDP growth to renewable energy consumption, confirming the conservation hypothesis, and from renewable energy consumption and GDP growth representing the growth hypothesis. Despite the mixed results across countries, it has been proved that the more persistent and significant the bi-directional long run relationship between the variables is, the higher the income countries are. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this article, I empirically test George Stigler's (1970) theoretical argument, which is based on Aaron Director's observation that income redistribution runs from the poor and the rich to the middle classes. Using a panel dataset for ten Canadian provinces from 1981 to 2008, I analyze the impact of various measures of inequality on provincial government size. The estimation results do not support the predictions of theories explaining the growth of government size on the basis of the median voter theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Road traffic injuries (RTIs) leading to death need the most essential concern for low, middle and high income societies. Mortality rate due to traffic injuries is considerable in Iran particularly during the last decade along with the industrialization process. The present study considered the trend of traffic injuries leading to death in Iran for a period of seven-years which started from March 2004 to March 2011. The formal merged Iranian database provided by the Ministry of Roads, the Legal Medicine Organization, the Traffic Police (NAJA), and the Ministry of Health covering 146, 269 deaths due to traffic injuries between 2004 and 2011 was analyzed. The time series method was carried out to determine the death trends of RTIs in the whole country. The Poisson regression model was used to estimate the changes in the frequency of events over time adjusting for associated known risk factors. The SARIMA (0, 1, 1)×(0, 1, 1)12 model was used for fitting to the time series of death rate. The death rate due to RTIs in Iran has statistically declined from 38 in 2004 to 31 per 100,000 populations in 2011. Based on the number of vehicles, the mortality rate has also declined from 38 to 12 cases per 10,000 vehicles from 2004 to 2011 respectively. However, the mortality rate was increased from 51 to 65 cases per 1000 accidents from 2004 to March 2011 respectively. Despite minor variations in mortality trends of RTIs in Iran according to different criteria, an annual average of 21,000 deaths is considerable and needs serious attentions. Modification of traffic laws, enhancement of police controls, improving transport infrastructure, holding education courses for drivers and providing optimal healthcare services are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We analyse preferences for public, private or mixed provision of childcare theoretically and empirically. We model childcare as a publicly provided private good. Richer households should prefer private provision to either pure public or mixed provision. If public provision redistributes from rich to poor, the rich should favour mixed over pure public provision, but if public provision redistributes from poor to rich, the rich and poor might favour mixed provision while the middle class favour public provision (‘ends against the middle’). Using estimates for household preferences from survey data, we find no support for the ends-against-the-middle result. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article examines distributional disparities within nations. There are six main conclusions. First, about 80 per cent of the world's population now lives in regions whose median country has a Gini close to 40. Second, as outliers are now only located among middle-income and rich countries, the 'upwards' side of the 'Inverted-U' between inequality and income per capita has evaporated (and with it the hypothesis that posits that 'things have to get worse before they can get better'). Third, among middle-income countries, Latin America and mineral-rich Southern Africa are uniquely unequal, while Eastern Europe follows a distributional path similar to the Nordic countries. Fourth, among rich countries there is a large (and growing) distributional diversity. Fifth, within a global trend of rising inequality, there are two opposite forces at work. One is 'centrifugal' and leads to an increased diversity in the shares of the top 10 per cent and bottom 40 per cent. The other is 'centripetal' and leads to a growing uniformity in the income-share appropriated by deciles 5 to 9. Therefore, half of the world's population (the middle and upper-middle classes) have acquired strong 'property rights' over half of their respective national incomes; the other half of this income, however, is increasingly up for grabs between the very rich and the poor. And sixth, globalization is thus creating a distributional scenario in which what really matters is the income-share of the rich (because the rest 'follows'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the findings of a study on food insecurity in households in Canada. Relation of income to food insecurity; Influence of age on the risk of experiencing food insecurity; Percentage of the population in several Canadian provinces and territories that have reported food insecurity; Comparison of the percentage of people who had not had enough to eat between low to lower-middle income households and middle to high-income households.

Presents an argument from Henry Cisneros who disucces the dangers faced by society as it becomes more stratified along ethnic and economic lines. Contends that the past decade of policy preferences for the wealthy and a neglect of education has produced a four-tiered education system and has widened the gap between rich and poor. The separation of higher education from everyone except the rich threatens social relations between the classes and possibilities for cultural unity.

The article discusses an analysis of 30 years data which focused on 3 groups that included low-income households, middle-income households and high-income households. It cites housing and health care as the dominant drivers of rising costs where the share of spending on these components increased for low- and middle-income households. It suggests the role of social safety net programs in decreasing the effect of rising basic need costs on low-income households.