Income stratification and between-group inequality

The paper demonstrates that the ratio of the Yitzhaki (1994) to the conventional measure of between-group inequality is in general equal to one minus twice the weighted average probability that a random member of a richer (on average) group is poorer than a random member of a poorer (on average) group, and may therefore be interpreted as an index of stratification in its own right

Программа основного магистерского курса “Социальная стратификация и неравенство”

The programme of mandatory course on “Social stratification and inequality” for MA students at the Ivan Franko National University of L’viv. Topic 1. Social field and social structure of a society. Topic 2. Status stratification. Topic 3. Types of social stratification. Topic 4. Classical stratification theories. Topic 5. System of contemporary social stratification theories. Topic 6. Dynamic aspects of social stratification and inequality. Topic 7. Social stratification in transitional societies. Topic 8. Processes of social stratification in modern Ukraine

Authorial and institutional stratification in open access publishing : the case of global health research

Using a database of recent articles published in the field of Global Health research, we examine institutional sources of stratification in publishing access outcomes. Traditionally, the focus on inequality in scientific publishing has focused on prestige hierarchies in established print journals. This project examines stratification in contemporary publishing with a particular focus on subscription vs. various Open Access (OA) publishing options. Findings show that authors working at lower-ranked universities are more likely to publish in closed/paywalled outlets, and less likely to choose outlets that involve some sort of Article Processing Charge (APCs; gold or hybrid OA). We also analyze institutional differences and stratification in the APC costs paid in various journals. Authors affiliated with higher-ranked institutions, as well as hospitals and non-profit organizations pay relatively higher APCs for gold and hybrid OA publications. Results suggest that authors affiliated with high-ranked universities and well-funded institutions tend to have more resources to choose pay options with publishing. Our research suggests new professional hierarchies developing in contemporary publishing, where various OA publishing options are becoming increasingly prominent. Just as there is stratification in institutional representation between different types of publishing access, there is also inequality within access types

Education, Income Distribution and Growth: The Local Connection

This paper develops a simple model of human capital accumulation and community formation by heterogeneous families, which provides an integrated framework for analyzing the local determinants of inequality and growth. Five main conclusions emerge. First, minor differences in education technologies, preferences, or wealth can lead to a high degree of stratification. Imperfect capital markets are not necessary, but will compound these other sources. Second, stratification makes inequality in education and income more persistent across generations. Whether or not the same is true of inequality in total wealth depends on the ability of the rich to appropriate the rents created by their secession. Third, the polarization of urban areas resulting from individual residential decisions can be quite inefficient, both from the point of view of aggregate growth and in the Pareto sense, especially in the long run. Fourth, when state-wide equalization of school expenditures is insufficient to reduce stratification, it may improve educational achievement in poor communities much less than it lowers it in richer communities; thus average academic performance and income growth both fall. Yet it may still be possible for education policy to improve both equity and efficiency. Fifth, because of the cumulative nature of the stratification process, it is likely to be much harder to reverse once it has run its course than to arrest it at an early stage.

Economic Crisis and Income Inequality in Korea

Using quarterly data for urban worker-households in Korea, I investigate trends in income and consumption inequality since the eruption of the recent economic crisis. I find evidence of sharply increasing income inequality while consumption inequality does not show any apparent trend. There is also evidence that severe deterioration in between-(income-decile)group inequality has more than offset minor improvement in within-group inequality, resulting in deterioration of overall income inequality. It is, therefore, believed that the worker households in Korea are undergoing a distinct process of income stratification parallel with the concentration of income after the economic crisis.Income inequality, the Gini coefficient and Income distribution in Korea

Age of selection counts: a cross-country comparison of educational institutions

"In this paper I combine a theoretically developed construction of the school to work transition literature, namely the stratification and standardization dimensions of the education system, and the more data oriented inequality of opportunity research of the economics of education. I collect several possible indicators for both dimensions to compare the countries: utilizing the PISA 2003 data and some other OECD sources I run multilevel analysis to test the effect of the collected country level stratification and standardization indicators on the inequality and on the effectiveness of education. Inequality of opportunity is indicated by the size of the parental background effect on the PISA literacy scores, while effectiveness is the literacy score adjusted for parental background and other individual characteristics. The results show that stratification associates strongly and positively with the inequality of educational opportunity, while standardization in general seems to enhance equality. I reject that stratification would increase effectiveness, and the association between standardization and effectiveness is not straightforward. The most robust finding of the study is that the early age of selection links closely with high inequality of opportunity." (author's abstract

Earnings inequality within and across gender, racial, and ethnic groups in four Latin American Countries

Latin American countries are generally characterized as displaying highincome and earnings inequality overall along with high inequality by gender, race, and ethnicity. However, the latter phenomenon is not a major contributor to the former phenomenon. Using household survey data from four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, and Guyana) for which stratification by race or ethnicity is possible, this paper demonstrates (using Theil index decompositions as well as Gini indices, and 90/10 and 50/10 percentile comparisons) that within-group earnings inequality rather than between-group earnings inequality is the main contributor to overall earnings inequality. Simulations in which the relatively disadvantaged gender and/or racial/ethnic group is treated as if it were the relatively advantaged group tend to reduce overall earnings inequality measures only slightly and in some cases have the effect of increasing earnings inequality measures.Access to Finance,,Gender and Development,Inequality,Gender and Law

Income inequality after apartheid

This paper investigates changes in and patterns of income inequality in South Africa during the post-apartheid period 1994 to 2004. While findings show a rapidly growing high-income African population (a trend that began before 1994 and continued thereafter) as well as rising real wages for workers in formal employment, overall levels of income inequality have not been declining This is due to rising unemployment and a small informal sector that have therefore left unchanged South Africa's high level of income inequality. If anything, overall inequality has worsened. Inter-racial inequality has decreased while intra-racial inequality has increased. Opportunities have improved for some African people in South Africa, but not for all: a lack of human and social capital leaves many with little chance of rising out of poverty; AIDS-related mortality and morbidity are likely to exacerbate stratification and further increase inequality.

GINI DP 20: Does Income Inequality Negatively Affect General Trust? Examining three potential problems with the inequality-trust hypothesis

Many studies on the consequences of income inequality find that where inequality is high, trust is low. There are, however, reasons to examine the relation between inequality and trust more closely. First, previous research does not differentiate between the effect of income inequality and that of national wealth. Furthermore, the underlying mechanism is often unclear. Finally, the association might be dependent on non-Western countries where income inequality is extremely high. In this paper, we evaluate whether there is a relation between income inequality and trust in a sample of Western developed economies when taking into account national wealth. Theoretically, we distinguish between stratification effects and perception effects of inequality. Empirically, besides actual income inequality and national wealth, we include a measurement of perceived inequality on the basis of individual level earnings estimations for stereotypical jobs. We find no significant effect of inequality on trust when taking into account national wealth, suggesting that in Western countries the amount of resources rather than its distribution explains trust. Key words: trust, income inequality, perceived inequality, national wealth, comparative research.

Stratification Economics and Identity Economics

Stratification economics represents an important new approach devoted to explaining economic inequality in terms of how social groups are separated or stratified along economic lines. This paper combines stratification economics with identity economics to address complications that the phenomenon of intersectionality – people having multiple social group identities – creates for stratification economics. It distinguishes two types of social identities recognized by social psychologists, categorical and relational social identities, and uses this distinction to explain how individuals’ personal identities, understood as ordered sets of social identities, can be seen to be both socially and self-constructed. Individuals order and rank their categorical social identities according to weights they assign to them in interactive social settings in which their role-based relational social identities combine different categorical social identities. Recent research in social psychology in the stigma identity threat literature is then reviewed to distinguish two different ways in which individuals respond to others’ stigmatization of their social groups in interactive settings. The paper argues that individuals respond to stigma by assigning weights to their categorical social group identities in ways that reflect both functional power relationships and stigmatization in a way that on balance tend to reinforce social stratification