Search

We examine how organizational practices making an economic evaluation of time salient, such as hourly pay, can lead people to spend less time on uncompensated work--volunteering. Using nationally representative survey data, in Study 1 we showed that, with other factors that might affect time decisions controlled, people paid by the hour were both less likely to volunteer and spent less time volunteering than counterparts who were not paid hourly. Study 2 showed that having people calculate their hourly wage was associated with decreased willingness to volunteer and that this experimental manipulation only affected people not paid by the hour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the construct and measurement of materialism and concludes that materialism is appropriately conceptualized as a consumer value. The development of a values-oriented materialism scale with three components--acquisition centrality, acquisition as the pursuit of happiness, and possession-defined success--is described. In validation tests high scorers (compared with low scorers) desired a higher level of income, placed greater emphasis on financial security and less on interpersonal relationships, preferred to spend more on themselves and less on others, engaged in fewer voluntary simplicity behaviors, and were less satisfied with their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a philosophical analysis of leisure and recreation. Industrialization has brought many advantages to man, but it also created many problems as well. Specialization in function has resulted in an uneven distribution of wealth. Leisure and education prospered when there was a surplus economy and declined when there is less of it. Definitions on leisure, recreation and play is provided. Naturalism is one the reasons which brought about the concept of leisure. From a metaphysical standpoint, there are two contrasting positions in regards to the nature of existence.

This study will utilize the data in the 1967 SEO to present evidence on the size, composition, and concentration of net wealth accumulation among black families compared to white families. The final section presents and tests a simple econometric model of the estimated relationship between income and wealth for black and white families. In preparing this paper it is well understood that survey data are notoriously unreliable on assets and liabilities. Larger samples do not remove the errors if there is a tendency for a distinct subgroup to misreport its assets or liabilities. A rather extensive literature has evolved concerning the errors in survey data on assets and liabilities and is noted. At various stages of the analysis the findings from the SEO are compared to results from the comprehensive Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Drawing on social comparison and equity theories, we investigated the role that perceived similarity of a comparison target plays in how resentful people feel about their relative financial status. In Study 1, participants tended to choose a comparison target who was better off, and they selected a target they perceived to be more similar than dissimilar along dimensions that surrounded their financial outcomes. In Study 1, perceived relative disadvantage was positively associated with resentment regardless of the perceived similarity of the comparison target. The results of Studies 2 to 5b clarified these findings by showing that being both similar and dissimilar to a target can cause resentment depending on the context. Using hypothetical and real social comparisons, we found that people are more dissatisfied with their financial outcomes when their comparative targets have the same background qualifications (i.e., are similar) but are financially better off (Studies 2, 3b, 4, and 5b). However, we also found that when the comparative financial contexts were similar (i.e., equal affluence), participants were more dissatisfied when their target for comparison had lower qualifications (i.e., was dissimilar; Studies 2, 3a, 4, and 5a). In all cases, perceptions of unfairness mediated the effects of social comparison on financial dissatisfaction. Taken together, these studies address some of the ambiguities around what it means to be similar to a target in the context of social comparisons of affluence, and they underscore the importance of perceived unfairness in the link between social comparison and resentment with one's financial status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to conventional wisdom, privatizing the commons will create wealth. Yet in cases found throughout the developing world, privatizing the commons has destroyed wealth. To explain this phenomenon, we develop a theory of wealth-destroying private property rights. Privatization’s effect on social wealth depends on whether privatizing an asset confers net gains or imposes net losses on society. The decision to privatize, however, depends on whether privatizing an asset confers net gains or imposes net losses on property decision makers. When decision makers are residual claimants, these effects move in tandem; privatization occurs only if it creates social wealth. When decision makers are not residual claimants, these effects may diverge; privatization occurs if it benefits decision makers personally even if privatization destroys social wealth. We apply our theory to understand wealth-destroying land privatization in Kajiado, Kenya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay aims to show how business ethics—understood as a three-level approach—can strengthen the social cohesion of a society, which is jeopardized today in many ways. In the first part, the purpose of business and the economy is explained as the creation of wealth defined as a combination of private and public wealth that includes natural, economic, human, and social capital. Special emphasis is placed on the implications of the creation of public wealth which requires institutions other than the market and motivations other than self-regarding ones. In the second part, the question of what holds a society together is discussed through different approaches: enlightened self-interest, a new game-theoretical approach, and the concept of the common good advanced by Catholic Social Teaching, followed by my own proposal. The third part presents several perspectives for business ethics to strengthen social cohesion of a society (a) by focusing on the purpose of business and the economy to create natural, economic, human, and social capital; (b) by advancing public goods that stand the test of ethical scrutiny; and (c) by securing human rights conceptualized as public goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the history, purpose and meaning of social justice. Topics discussed are perception of power and wealth from the beginning of civilization to the American Revolution, comparison of the political system of the ancient Greeks and Romans with the Western heritage including the idea of social contract between the government and the people, association of social justice to equality, and basic principles that should be considered as a framework for defining social justice.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including history of wealth, its social aspects and exhibition on wealth in 19th century.

The article presents the author's views on the debates and criticism on wealth in Germany between 1945-1960s. Various topics discussed include economic condition of German societies during the period, currency reform in it, tangible and intangible wealth, fascination and desire of wealth among people.

We study the role of family wealth for children's educational achievement using novel Swedish register data. In particular, we focus on the relationship between grandparents' wealth and their grandchildren's educational achievement. Doing so allows us to reliably establish the independent role of wealth in contributing to long-term inequalities in opportunity. We use regression models with extensive controls to account for observed socioeconomic characteristics of families, cousin fixed effects to net out potentially unobserved grandparent effects, and marginal structural models to account for endogenous selection. We find substantial associations between grandparents' wealth and their grandchildren's grade point averages (GPA) in the 9th grade that are only partly mediated by parents' socioeconomic characteristics and wealth. Our findings indicate that family wealth inequality--even in a comparatively egalitarian context like Sweden--has profound consequences for the distribution of opportunity across multiple generations. We posit that our estimates of the long-term consequences of wealth inequality may be conservative for nations other than Sweden, like the United States, where family wealth--in addition to its insurance and normative functions--allows the direct purchase of educational quality and access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think," by Mary S. Morgan is presented. Topics discussed in the book include thinking of economists, analysis of wealth's social distribution, marginalist revolution and scientific aspects of truth. An overview of the book is also given.

The role of an innovative city with an entrenched knowledge-economy has long been seen as a key drive of investment in cities, resulting in inclusive prosperity. However, until very recently, many of the metrics used to qualify these terms are either anecdotal, or unclear from a methodological standpoint. This article explores the importance of leveraging high calibre, internationally comparable and standardized city data as a tool to make wise investment decisions in cities, driving economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do members of some ethnic groups rebel against the state? One approach holds that groups subject to exclusion from national politics engage in armed conflict. We theorize that the presence of resource wealth moderates the effect of political exclusion. Ethnic groups subject to exclusion whose settlement area includes oil wealth are more likely to experience the onset of armed conflict than groups experiencing exclusion alone. We depart from the convention of cross-national analysis to examine subnational, geocoded units of analysis—ethnic group settlement areas—to better capture the impact of natural resource distribution. Using data on ethnic group political exclusion derived from the Ethnic Power Relations database and geo-coded indicators, we conduct a series of logistic regression analyses for the years 1946 to 2005. We find that exclusion alone increase the likelihood of conflict, while the presence of oil wealth further raises the risk of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some individuals participate in human rights protests while others do not? This paper argues that motivating factors and personality traits must simultaneously exist for protest participation. Liberal ideology or human rights knowledge motivates individuals to participate in human rights protests. Extraversion or openness to experience among personality traits transforms the motivations into an actual behavior (i.e. protest participation). This argument draws from both contentious politics and political psychology. Data from the 2011 Korean General Social Survey (KGSS) provides empirical support for the claim that an individual who has a liberal ideology or human rights knowledge is more likely to participate in human rights protests when the individual is open to experience or extroverted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Aristotelian virtue of magnificence. Topics discussed include providing increased amounts of money for projects beneficial to people, concept of liberality for better human life with objections from Aristotle on condition of slaves and women; and objection raised on original Aristotelian theory and wealth acquisition.

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the startling disparities in income and wealth in contemporary U.S. society. The enormous concentration of economic power in the top 1% is the culmination of decades of significant income and wealth gains for the top, combined with stagnant or decreasing growth for the majority--a trend that continues apace. The implications of this wealth gap reverberate across the socio-legal landscape, but nowhere is the gap more glaring than in the civil docket, where litigation--particularly class actions brought by or on behalf of low-income consumers and employees--is on the verge of disappearing. To be sure, the decline in class actions is only part of the larger story, as procedural and substantive constraints on legal access are visible everywhere--from problems of non-representation, to cuts in funding for legal aid and court administration, to heightened pleading standards, increasingly restrictive views of standing to sue, and the privatization of justice. But the thesis of this Essay is that the unavailability of class litigation is disproportionately more harmful to low-income groups than any other legal impairment, for a number of reasons. The first is sadly obvious: economically disadvantaged groups are more susceptible to abusive practices in the marketplace and the workplace, suffering disproportionate instances of predatory lending, consumer fraud, unfair wages, and discrimination. Without a mechanism for aggregating these low-value claims, the rights of low-income individuals would simply slip through the legal cracks, unvindicated. But, more brutally, recent studies show that, to a large and disturbing extent, the poor stay poor: when members of low-income groups suffer from group-based wrongdoing, they are likely to experience the same or similar wrongdoing again in the future. The failure to detect and deter bad actors who prey on the poor only promotes chronic exploitation and the perpetuation of intractable poverty. And again, class litigation is often the best or only means of bringing these claims. This Essay ends by examining an important by-product of the disappearance of low-income claimants from the civil docket: as contemporary judges see fewer civil cases brought by or on behalf of poor people, one might expect that they will grow further out of touch with and more ill-equipped to manage these claims; and as this reservoir of wisdom empties, judicial attitudes towards the poor may harden, growing disdainful and ungenerous. Accordingly, when judges are sporadically faced with the legal claims of low-income groups, it becomes harder to spot (or easier to ignore) patterns of exploitative, abusive conduct by corporate or governmental actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the recent literature on wealth inequality from a comparative and historical perspective. I first discuss how the stock, composition, and distribution of wealth changed from the 18th century onwards. In the second part of the paper, I move on to the causal questions: What factors drive wealth inequality? Why does the distribution of wealth vary across nations? In the third and concluding section I briefly discuss the socio-political challenges posed by increasing wealth inequality, and identify several key questions for research going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia Mexicana is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We examine distributions of pollution and wealth among countries over a 20 year period. We distinguish between pollution produced within a country and pollution triggered along global supply chains by a country's consumption. We explain pollution and wealth distributions via network characteristics. Our findings show a positive, (log-) linear relationship between a country's network position and both ways of accounting for pollution. In addition, core countries and/or ones with higher numbers and volume of export ties increase their shares of global wealth faster than shares of pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wealth inequality endangers democratic values and calls for a public response. This Article contends that family businesses merit special scrutiny because they control vast amounts of private wealth and combine two of society's most important economic institutions: family and business. Accordingly, family businesses implicate concerns regarding both inherited wealth and the concentration of economic power made possible by the corporate form. Despite their economic significance, little has been done to investigate whether family businesses contribute to wealth inequality. This Article offers the first legal, and one of the only academic, treatments of the topic and shows that family businesses play a double role. On the one hand, family businesses reinforce existing disparities in wealth and opportunity. Heirs, after all, stand to benefit from the hard work of previous generations. On the other hand, family businesses can be a powerful antidote to inequality, disrupting entrenched class hierarchies and creating opportunities for individuals, families, and ethnic communities. This Article concludes that whether family businesses produce net social costs or benefits depends crucially on two principal factors. First, to the extent there is a lack of public investment in social mobility, family businesses can increase the distribution of wealth by providing needed investments in human capital. Second, to the extent the rewards of capitalism are not widely shared, family businesses can offer a source of opportunity for family members, employees, and the communities in which family businesses operate. Thus, family businesses should not be viewed in isolation; a comprehensive response to the problem of wealth inequality must involve the state, the family, and the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the factors that contribute to Latino male success in higher education. In this qualitative study, Yosso's (2005) community cultural wealth framework provides an asset-based perspective to illuminate how Latino males used different forms of capital to nurture and sustain their dispositions to succeed at a selective, predominantly White institution. Whereas parents and college preparatory programs nurtured participants' success before college, mentors and peers sustained their dispositions to succeed during college. Implications for research, policy, and practice focus on nurturing and sustaining community cultural wealth among Latino males in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the concept ‘justice’ undergirds every discourse on affirmative action, its meaning is feverishly contested with contradictory definitions wielded as battling swords in a zero sum struggle over the distribution of scarce material resources and symbolic goods. In part, the issues have become even more important since the number of states that have now embarked on affirmative action policies have been growing and the results have been diverse. Affirmative action policies have occurred most frequently in internally heterogeneous societies marked by deep ethno-cultural divisions in which one ethnic community has tended to dominate the rest. To overcome inequalities and ingrained segmental prejudices in these multi-ethnic countries that witnessed over the years the cementing of advantages and privileges among certain ethnic groups has been the primary aim of affirmative action policies. Upheavals and ongoing conflicts have generally dogged these experiences, attesting to some successful societal changes in institutions and practices, to winners and losers. In this paper, we examine some of the controversies, especially in relation to two paradigms and perspectives of social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary IQ scores differ substantially across nations. This study argues that cross-country variations in IQ scores, to a large extent, reflect the burden of parasitic and infectious diseases (PIDs) and iron and iodine deficiency (IID) in infancy and in utero . Furthermore, it is shown that the prevalence of health insults, through the channel of cognitive ability, is influential for the level as well as the growth in productivity across the world. Using data for 181 countries and an instrumental variable approach, regressions reveal that the prevalence of PID–IIDs is influential for growth and income inequalities globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zoroastrian theology's emphasis on living the good life; the encouragement to create material wealth with the accompanying social obligations to put it to good use, explains the immensely extensive welfare system put in place by the Parsi community in India. Following the Arab conquest of Iran, the diminution in numbers and stature of the Zoroastrians in the ancestral land and the subsequent Parsi settlement in India, meant the marginalization of a people whose forebears once ruled a mighty empire. Once the Parsis acquired financial success, they put in place a community-wide network of benevolent institutions. This was followed by extending a muscular benevolence to the Zoroastrians of Iran, which evolved into a highly structured undertaking to ensure the safeguarding of the community from virtual extinction. Thus, Zoroastrian philanthropy was as much a reaffirmation of religious traditions as it was a means of self-preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Can the discovery of petroleum resources increase the risk of civil conflict even before their exploitation? We argue that it can, but only in poorer states where oil revenues threaten to alter the balance of power between regimes and their opponents, rendering bargains in the present obsolete in the future. We develop our claims via a game-theoretic model of bargaining between a government and a rebel group, where decisions over war and peace occur in the shadow of increasing oil wealth that both increases national wealth and shifts relative power in the government's favor. To test the model's main hypothesis, we leverage data on newly discovered oil deposits as an indicator of the state's expected future power resources. Our argument has important implications for the literature on credible commitments, power shifts, and violent conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contrast between Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's The Triple Package (Chua & Rubenfeld 2.0) and Chua's previous work, World on Fire (Chua 1.0), is striking. Chua & Rubenfeld 2.0 contends that particular ethnic and religious groups are spectacularly successful in the United States because of a "triple package" of traits that are largely cultural; however, there is nary a word in Chua & Rubenfeld 2.0 about the role that law might play in contributing to wealth acquisition among the subject groups. In contrast, Chua 1.0 clearly acknowledges the role of law through "law-in-culture" when accounting for the wealth of those whom Chua calls "market-dominant minorities." "Law-in-culture" consists of binding rules, such as default contract terms, that often underlie market relations in perilous "third world" environments. While these rules are not enforceable by the state, they are powerful because those who ignore them risk ostracism by their co-ethnics, with whom they often contract. Perhaps because Chua & Rubenfeld 2.0 focuses on particular ethnic groups within the United States—a country that epitomizes the protection of property and contract rights—it overlooks the potential role of "law-in-culture" in accounting for wealth acquisition of particular groups. This oversight is significant. Many of the subject ethnic groups had contracting advantages underwritten by "law-in-culture" in their countries of origin. I am particularly concerned about the absence of a discussion of institutions—whether underwritten by "law" or "law-in-culture"—when Chua & Rubenfeld 2.0 discusses Black people. A case in question is Nigerian Americans. Given their focus on Nigerian American economic success, a comparison to African American economic success (or lack thereof) is foreseeable. The question is inevitable: if Nigerian immigrants do so well in the United States, what does this say about the continuing scholarly emphasis on institutional (as opposed to cultural) impediments to native Black, that is, African American economic success? Chua & Rubenfeld 2.0 acknowledges institutional impediments to African American success, but they say very little about institutional advantages that Nigerian Americans may have. In fairness to Chua and Rubenfeld, they are likely constrained by the dearth of scholarship on the pre- and post-migration trajectories of Nigerian Americans, who are largely recent migrants. Thus, to explore the potential relevance of institutional factors, I consider the original Black "triple package" group for which much more scholarship is available, West Indians. I contend that institutional background matters. For example, even the earliest turn-of-the-century Black West Indian migrants gained exposure to an institutional context for wealth acquisition through the extension of property and contract rights to slaves and their descendants in the West Indies. This stands in stark contrast to the institutional context that generally existed for African Americans, not only during slavery, but also in the pre-civil rights southern United States. Thus, despite the historical sociological focus on West Indian American success, I question the notion that West Indian Americans are necessarily a useful comparative sample to African Americans simply because they are Black—particularly given the historical disparity between West Indian Americans and African Americans in accessing institutions for wealth creation. The question then becomes if the same might be true of Nigerian Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid increase of wealth inequality in the past few decades is a most disturbing social and economic issue of our time. In order to control, and even reverse that surge, its origin and underlying mechanisms should be revealed. One of the challenges in studying these mechanisms is to incorporate realistic individual dynamics in the population level in a self-consistent manner. Our theoretical approach meets the challenge by using interacting multi-agent master-equations to model the dynamics of wealth inequality. The model is solved using stochastic multi-agent iterated maps. Taking into account growth rate, return on capital, private savings and economic mobility, we were able to capture the historical dynamics of wealth inequality in the United States during the course of the 20th century. We show that the fraction of capital income in the national income and the fraction of private savings are the critical factors that govern the wealth inequality dynamics. In addition, we found that economic mobility plays a crucial role in wealth accumulation. Notably, we found that the major decrease in private savings since the 1980s could be associated primarily with the recent surge in wealth inequality and if nothing changes in this respect we predict further increase in wealth inequality in the future. However, the 2007–08 financial crisis brought an opportunity to restrain the wealth inequality surge by increasing private savings. If this trend continues, it may lead to prevention, and even reversing, of the ongoing inequality surge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-Soviet Havana, material resources emerge as a factor in terms of which women assess a man's desirability as a potential partner. These tendencies in current gender relations relate to the larger transformations in Cuba's political and economic context. The fall of Eastern European and Soviet state socialisms seriously diminished the Cuban state's ability to provide social services. Remittances generated through transnational kin ties and recent liberalistic changes in labour politics intensify the disparities of wealth. Moreover, Cuba's dependence on tourism as a source of national income has brought about changes to the possibilities for social mobility available through the promises of migration and affluence that relationships with foreigners can offer. This article focuses on the gendered consequences of these large-scale transformations, experienced as the increasing intertwining of material resources and desirability, especially when it comes to men's attractiveness. Coping with increasing demands from women, men draw on local notions of masculinity that include elements both of machismo and responsible manhood. Men thereby at times comply and at times resist women's expectations on them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Puerto Rican households experience a wealth gap relative to non-Puerto Rican Latinos and Non-Latino groups. This research relies on the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), Public Use Micro-Data Sample of 2008 of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the "asset side," Puerto Rican households showed a weak "wealth platform" relative to most groups. Housing assets, most important for all groups, was poorly valuated in the asset portfolio of Puerto Rican households. On the "liabilities side," Puerto Ricans seemed better off than other Latino subgroups, although it is important to consider that the mean value of the assets of Puerto Rican households tends to be lower, especially housing assets. After taking into consideration assets and liabilities, the net wealth base of Puerto Rican households is very weak. Over half of Puerto Rican households (67 percent) are wealth poor, suggesting a "thin" middle-class. Direct and indirect policy action is needed to promote the creation and preservation of individual and community assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how factors operating at the state and community levels are associated with the prevalence of late school enrolment in Nigeria. We investigate the following three research themes. First, whether late entry varies across states and across communities and how much of this variation can be explained by the composition of communities and states. Second, whether community wealth and state wealth are stronger predictors of late entry than household wealth. Third, whether wealth has different effects on the probability of late school entry in different states and in different communities within states. Using the 2010 Nigeria Education Data Survey, and a three-level multilevel logit model, we show that a substantial proportion of the variation in late school entry is explained by community- and state-level factors. We further find that children living in specific communities in Nigeria may face a double disadvantage in terms of on-time school enrolment. In these communities, not only is there a large proportion of children entering school late, but also household wealth has strong effects on the probability that a child is sent to school on on time. These communities could be targeted for educational interventions aimed at promoting on-time school enrolment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The greatest, most valuable thing for each person is his diverse, enriched spiritually and materially life. The article is concerned with research of the wealth phenomenon as a basis of society development, the main cause and stimulus for government activities as to society. The sociocultural factors of wealth phenomenon social codes formation are clearly formulated in the research. The article highlights the main intentions concerning the attitude towards wealth in Ukraine. The methodology of social and philosophic phenomena research saw transformation in the twentieth century. Previously the economic views on society's development and functioning had been restricted and one-sided. The response to it was the methodology of post-modernism, the conception which analyses socioeconomic phenomena with special attention paid to cultural, ethic aspects of social co-operation and equilibrium. It concerns the wealth phenomenon to a full degree; this promotes reproduction of people's logical vital activity, harmonization of their relations and formation of the society of justice. Nevertheless, a spiritual constituent of being is the main thing, life is the greatest value. A man's behaviour is not rational, depends on various factors and takes into account his perception of the world. It is wealth that gives a stimulus to society development as what is owned by a smaller part of society becomes available to the majority in the course of time due to a huge desire to have a life similar to that of selected part of population; this fact promotes public progress. M. Foucault, who described the process of wealth formation as both of material and spiritual constituent of a man's vital activities in the context of senses of a right to die and power over life, says that the situation, which took place in some countries of the West in the XVIII century, was a crucial point in the development of capitalism. Since then a human body has been an instrument, which allows to earn capital, and this encourages authorities to care about life of a man. Authorities started to protect a human body, contribute to its development, health, reproduction, nutrition, life conditions and space of existence in general. Authorities aim to reveal and use maximum capabilities of a human body, and they do it in a regulative way rather than a "punitive" one. The techniques of compulsion and control used by authorities up to the XVIII century were replaced by encouragement, namely, by a reward with labour and, as a result, remuneration for labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What do inherited financial assets signify to heirs and testators and how does this shape their conduct? Based on grounded theory methodology and twenty open, thematically structured interviews with US heirs, future heirs and testators, this article explicates a theoretical account that proposes a moral ambivalence as the core category to understand the social meaning of inherited financial assets. In particular, the analysis reveals that the social meaning of inherited assets is a contingent, individual compromise between seeing inherited assets as unachieved wealth and seeing them as family means of support. Being the lifetime achievement of another person, inheritances are, on the one hand, morally dubious and thus difficult to appropriate. Yet in terms of family solidarity, inheritances are "family money," which is used when need arises. Taken from this angle, inheriting is not the transfer of one individual's privately held property to another person, but rather the succession of the social status as support-giver along with the resources that belong to this status to the family's next generation. Heirs need to find a personal compromise between these poles, which always leaves room for interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lance Taylor, in this issue, offers a solid critique of Piketty's account of the causes of the changes in inequality over the past centuries and especially its recent increase. Piketty's analysis relies on the neo-Classical aggregate production function, and the relationship r>g; Taylor's critique hits the mark on the first, but seems to miss on the second, and his alternative account also appears flawed. He invokes Pasinetti, but the Pasinetti model gives very different results if some realistic changes are introduced. In particular, if high executive pay is taken into account, as realism demands, an apparently opposite conclusion or a contradiction may be reached. But dropping the requirement that growth be balanced ('uneven development') allows a Pasinetti approach to establish a simple, though still abstract and partial, model of the growth of inequality in wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role that wealth and nationality played in the rate of survival among Jews during the Holocaust in the Netherlands throughout the German occupation of the country during World War II, from 1942 through 1945. An overview of the role that social class position played in German and Dutch Jews' transfer to the transit concentration camp Westerbork, Netherlands and in the deportation of Jews to concentration camps throughout Europe is provided.

How do private transfers differ by race and ethnicity, and do such differences explain the racial and ethnic disparity in wealth? Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study examines private transfers by race and ethnicity in the United States and explores a causal relationship between private transfers and wealth. Panel data and a family-level fixed-effect model are used to control for the endogeneity of private transfers. Private transfers in the form of financial support received and given from extended families and friends, as well as large gifts and inheritances, are examined. We find that African Americans and Hispanics (both immigrant and nonimmigrant) receive less in both types of private transfers than whites. Large gifts and inheritances, but not net financial support received, are related to wealth increases for African American and white families. Overall, we estimate that the African American shortfall in large gifts and inheritances accounts for 12 % of the white-black racial wealth gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]