Ranking Inequality: Applications of Multivariate Subset Selection

Inequality measures are often presented in the form of a rank ordering to highlight their relative magnitudes. However, a rank ordering may produce misleading inference, because the inequality measures themselves are statistical estimators with different standard errors, and because a rank ordering necessarily implies multiple comparisons across all measures. Within this setting, if differences between several inequality measures are simultaneously and statistically insignificant, the interpretation of the ranking is changed. This study uses a multivariate subset selection procedure to make simultaneous distinctions across inequality measures at a pre-specified confidence level. Three applications of this procedure are explored using country-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study. The findings show that simultaneous precision plays an important role in relative inequality comparisons and should not be ignored.Income distribution, Inference, Poverty, Subset Selection

Ranking Inequality: Applications of Multivariate Subset Selection

Inequality measures are often presented in the form of a rank ordering to highlight their relative magnitudes. However, a rank ordering may produce misleading inference, because the inequality measures themselves are statistical estimators with different standard errors, and because a rank ordering necessarily implies multiple comparisons across all measures. Within this setting, if differences between several inequality measures are simultaneously and statistically insignificant, the interpretation of the ranking is changed. This study uses a multivariate subset selection procedure to make simultaneous distinctions across inequality measures at a pre-specified confidence level. Three applications of this procedure are explored using country-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study. The findings show that simultaneous precision plays an important role in relative inequality comparisons and should not be ignored

Ranking Inequality: Applications of Multivariate Subset Selection

Inequality measures are often presented in the form of a rank ordering to highlight their relative magnitudes. However, a rank ordering may produce misleading inference, because the inequality measures themselves are statistical estimators with different standard errors, and because a rank ordering necessarily implies multiple comparisons across all measures. Within this setting, if differences between several inequality measures are simultaneously and statistically insignificant, the interpretation of the ranking is changed. This study uses a multivariate subset selection procedure to make simultaneous distinctions across inequality measures at a pre-specified confidence level. Three applications of this procedure are explored using country-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study. The findings show that simultaneous precision plays an important role in relative inequality comparisons and should not be ignored

School Finance, Equivalent Educational Expenditure, and Income Distribution: Equal Dollars or Equal Chances for Success?

This paper breaks new ground in the debate on school finance and equality of per pupil school expenditures. We are able to allocate expenditures per pupil at the *individual* student and family income level. This allows us to examine both student and school district characteristics and to assess several measures of equality of expenditure across the income distribution of parents and by funding sources. We find a surprising degree of equality in the actual amounts expended per child in low- vs. high-income families. But adjusting for student needs to reach equivalent education expenditures results in much greater inequality over the income distribution. Policy implications for school finance and increased equality of educational opportunity are drawn in closing

Ranking Inequality: Applications of Multivariate Subset Selection

Inequality measures are often presented in the form of a rank ordering to highlight their relative magnitudes. However, a rank ordering may produce misleading inference, because the inequality measures themselves are statistical estimators with different standard errors, and because a rank ordering necessarily implies multiple comparisons across all measures. Within this setting, if differences between several inequality measures are *simultaneously* and statistically insignificant, the interpretation of the ranking is changed. This study uses a multivariate subset selection procedure to make simultaneous distinctions across inequality measures at a pre-specified confidence level. Three applications of this procedure are explored using country-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study. The findings show that simultaneous precision plays an important role in relative inequality comparisons and should not be ignored

Poor People in Rich Nations: The United States in Comparative Perspective

Most examinations of United States domestic antipoverty policy are inherently parochial, for they are based on the experiences of only our nation in isolation from the others. However, cross-national comparisons can also teach lessons about antipoverty policy. While all nations value low poverty, high levels of economic self-reliance, and equality of opportunity for younger persons, they differ dramatically in the extent to which they reach these goals. Nations also exhibit differences in the extent to which working age adults mix economic self-reliance (earned incomes), family support, and government support to avoid poverty. We begin by reviewing international concepts and measures of poverty. The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database contains the information needed to construct comparable poverty measures for more than 30 nations. It allows comparisons of the level and trend of poverty and inequality across several nations, along with considerable detail on the sources of market incomes and public policies that shape these outcomes. We will highlight the different relationships between antipoverty policy and outcomes among several countries, and consider the implications of our analysis for research and for antipoverty policy in the United States. In doing so, we will draw on a growing body of evidence that evaluates antipoverty programs in a cross-national context. Many international bodies have publishes crossnational studies of the incidence of poverty in recent years, including the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Human Development Report, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Luxembourg Income Study. A large subset of these studies is based on LIS data

Understanding the effects of Covid-19 through a life course lens

The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic’s effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic’s implications for the organization and experience of life transitions and trajectories within and across central domains: health, personal control and planning, social relationships and family, education, work and careers, and migration and mobility. We consider both the life course implications of being infected by the Covid-19 virus or attached to someone who has; and being affected by the pandemic’s social, economic, cultural, and psychological consequences. It is our goal to offer some programmatic observations on which life course research and policies can build as the pandemic’s short- and long-term consequences unfold

Does democracy promote equality?

The linkage between liberal democracy and income inequality has been the subject of considerable empirical research. However, the literature has largely ignored advances in the techniques for measuring income distribution which help to improve and strengthen the robustness of research findings in this field. by drawing upon recent developments in data collection and formal analyses, this paper explores inequality trends in selected Western democracies over the 1970s and 1980s. The results indicate that the gap between rich and poor is widening in some countries but not in all, thus pointing to the role of national policies in the redistribution of income. Conventional models grounded on demand driven policies persuasively explain declining income inequality, yet fail to account for the rising trends in the 1980s. Reasons for this failure are the omission of political 'slack' as a key dimension in redistributive options and the fallacy of linearity. The paper shows that despite significant progress, we are still not in a position to be confident of our theories and methods