Inequality

This paper reviews five striking facts about inequality across countries. As Kuznets (1955) famously first documented, inequality first rises and then falls with income. More unequal societies are much less likely to have democracies or governments that respect property rights. Unequal societies have less redistribution, and we have little idea whether this relationship is caused by redistribution reducing inequality or inequality reducing redistribution. Inequality and ethnic heterogeneity are highly correlated, either because of differences in educational heritages across ethnicities or because ethnic heterogeneity reduces redistribution. Finally, there is much more inequality and less redistribution in the U. S. than in most other developed nations.

An evaluation of common explanations for the impact of income inequality on life satisfaction

This study explains how income inequality affects life satisfaction in Europe. Although research about the impact of income inequality on life satisfaction is inconclusive, authors suggest several reasons for its potential impact. In the literature section we discuss three types of explanations for the impact of inequality: pure aversion for inequality, aversion for inequality motivated by how an individual is personally affected by inequality and preferences for equality of opportunities. In order to test these explanations, we examine how three corresponding variables, respectively attitude towards redistribution, income and perceived mobility, interact with both actual and perceived income inequality in multilevel analyses using data from the European Values Survey. Our results reveal that there are significant differences between how people are affected by actual income inequality and how they are affected by perceived income inequality. The impact of perceived income inequality on life satisfaction depends on perceived mobility in society and income, while the impact of actual income inequality solely depends on perceived mobility. We conclude that traditional explanations often erroneously assume that people correctly assess income inequality. Moreover these explanations are more capable of clarifying the effect of perceived income inequality on life satisfaction than that of actual inequality

Tracking Oregon's Progress: A Focus On Income Inequality

Inequality in income, consumption, education, and quality of life across populations has become a growing concern in the United States. As the nation's attention shifts toward issues of inequality, it is important to understand the prevalence of inequality in Oregon. However, studying income inequality alone is not sufficient; counties with low income inequality can have high poverty, among other challenges. County and state variations in income inequality are partially due to differences in the population, their earning potential and their access to high-wage work. By examining poverty and inequality together, it is possible to gain a fuller understanding of the economic well-being of communities. Findings from this study reveal that:Oregon has consistently ranked 22nd in the nation for its level of income inequality since the mid-2000s, meaning that just over half of the states in the nation have more income inequality than Oregon.Within the western region of the U.S., Oregon has above average levels of income inequality.Within Oregon, counties vary in levels of income inequality.Multnomah, Benton, and Lane counties have consistently high income inequality. High income inequality is not unexpected in urban areas or small counties with large populations of university students.Hood River and Morrow counties maintain consistently low levels of income inequality. Low income inequality can indicate that an economy is providing a mix of jobs that support middle income earners, as in the case of Hood River. However, low income inequality can also result from a lack of high wage earners, as in Morrow and other rural counties in the state

Is Pension Inequality Growing?

Employer-sponsored pensions are an important source of retirement income and often make the difference between having a comfortable retirement and just scraping by. Over the past two decades, pension sponsorship and participation have remained relatively constant. At any given point in time, roughly half of private sector workers age 25-64 are covered by pension plans. This constancy, however, masks a growing inequality in pension participation by income that has become more pronounced with the shift from traditional defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. This brief documents and explores trends in pension participation by income. The first section discusses the relative importance of private pensions as a source of retirement income. The second section examines trends in pension sponsorship and participation rates. The third section explores why some individuals choose not to participate. The final section concludes that the shift to defined contribution plans has been a significant factor in the drop in coverage for low earners.

General correlation functions of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality for arbitrarily high-dimensional systems

We generalize the correlation functions of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality to arbitrarily high-dimensional systems. Based on this generalization, we construct the general CHSH inequality for bipartite quantum systems of arbitrarily high dimensionality, which takes the same simple form as CHSH inequality for two-dimension. This inequality is optimal in the same sense as the CHSH inequality for two dimensional systems, namely, the maximal amount by which the inequality is violated consists with the maximal resistance to noise. We also discuss the physical meaning and general definition of the correlation functions. Furthermore, by giving another specific set of the correlation functions with the same physical meaning, we realize the inequality presented in [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 88,}040404 (2002)].Comment: 4 pages, accepted by Phys. Rev. Let