Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study

Atkinson’s book Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Harvard University Press, 2015) sets out a range of concrete proposals aimed at reducing income inequality, which cover a very broad span but include major changes to the income tax and social transfers system and the minimum wage. These are framed with specific reference to the UK but have much broader relevance in demonstrating how substantial the impact on inequality of such measures could be. This paper assesses the first-round effects of these tax, transfer and minimum wage reforms on income inequality and poverty based on a microsimulation approach using EUROMOD. The reforms involve a significantly more progressive income tax structure, a major increase in the minimum wage to the level which is estimated to represent the ‘Living Wage’, and alternative routes to reforming social transfers – either to strengthen the social insurance element or to restructure the entire system as a Participation Income (a variant of Basic/Citizen’s Income). The results show how the first-round effects of either set of tax and transfer proposals would be to substantially reduce the extent of income inequality and relative income poverty and the paper draws out how the two approaches differ in their effects. The additional impact of raising the minimum wage to the Living Wage is modest, reflecting in particular the position of beneficiaries in the household income distribution and the offsetting effects on household income of the withdrawal of means-tested cash transfers

Does Income Mobility Equalize Longer-term Incomes? New Measures of an Old Concept

This paper develops a new class of measures of mobility as an equalizer of longer-term incomes – a concept different from other notions such as mobility as time-independence, positional movement, share movement, income flux, and directional income movement. A number of properties are specified leading to a class of indices, one easily-implementable member of which is applied to data for the United States and France. Using this index, income mobility is found to have equalized longer-term earnings among U.S. men in the 1970s but not in the 1980s or 1990s. In France, though, income mobility was equalizing throughout, and it has attained its maximum in the most recent period

Changes in Economic Inequality in Europe and Latin America in the First Decades of the Twenty-First Century

This open access volume identifies the common and specific aspects of social mechanisms that generate inequalities, through comparative analyses of different dimensions in which inequalities are expressed. It includes studies on social inequalities in 5 European and 5 Latin American countries, along 11 thematic axes: inequalities in the labour market and labour trajectories; asymmetries in the relationship between training and employment; inequalities in work and family life; educational inequalities; geographical and social inequalities: ethnicity and language; social inequalities, migration and space; uncertainty, strategies, resources and capabilities; inequality of opportunity: intergenerational social mobility; social policies; gender inequalities; and research methodology. This volume is the result of a large collaborative project on social inequality funded by the European Commission: the International Network for Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities. Taking into account diverse perspectives and approximations, the collaborators have created a general analytical framework as a model of analysis of social inequalities. The various contributions in this volume help readers gain a global outlook and help reflect on social inequalities in a comparative perspective. This volume addresses social science graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, social policy makers, as well as a broader academic audience interested in social inequality.Fil: Salvia, Hector Agustin. Universidad Catolica Argentina; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Black carbon as an additional indicator of the adverse health effects of airborne particles compared with PM10 and PM2.5.

Current air quality standards for particulate matter (PM) use the PM mass concentration [PM with aerodynamic diameters ≤ 10 μm (PM(10)) or ≤ 2.5 μm (PM(2.5))] as a metric. It has been suggested that particles from combustion sources are more relevant to human health than are particles from other sources, but the impact of policies directed at reducing PM from combustion processes is usually relatively small when effects are estimated for a reduction in the total mass concentration

Visible inequality breeds more inequality

Experiments suggest that when people can see wealth inequality in their social network, this propels further inequality through reduced cooperation and reduced social connectivity. News & Views comment on Nishi et al, Nature 526, 2015, p. 426-429

Brief Report: AIP Mutation in Pituitary Adenomas in the 18th Century and Today

From New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 364, issue 1, p.43-50. Copyright © (2011) Massachusetts Medical Society. Reprinted with permission.Gigantism results when a growth hormone–secreting pituitary adenoma is present before epiphyseal fusion. In 1909, when Harvey Cushing examined the skeleton of an Irish patient who lived from 1761 to 1783,1-3 he noted an enlarged pituitary fossa. We extracted DNA from the patient’s teeth and identified a germline mutation in the aryl hydrocarbon–interacting protein gene (AIP). Four contemporary Northern Irish families who presented with gigantism, acromegaly, or prolactinoma have the same mutation and haplotype associated with the mutated gene. Using coalescent theory, we infer that these persons share a common ancestor who lived about 57 to 66 generations earlier

Application of a genetic risk score to racially diverse type 1 diabetes populations demonstrates the need for diversity in risk-modeling

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Prior studies identified HLA class-II and 57 additional loci as contributors to genetic susceptibility for type 1 diabetes (T1D). We hypothesized that race and/or ethnicity would be contextually important for evaluating genetic risk markers previously identified from Caucasian/European cohorts. We determined the capacity for a combined genetic risk score (GRS) to discriminate disease-risk subgroups in a racially and ethnically diverse cohort from the southeastern U.S. including 637 T1D patients, 46 at-risk relatives having two or more T1D-related autoantibodies (≥2AAb+), 790 first-degree relatives (≤1AAb+), 68 second-degree relatives (≤1 AAb+), and 405 controls. GRS was higher among Caucasian T1D and at-risk subjects versus ≤ 1AAb+ relatives or controls (P < 0.001). GRS receiver operating characteristic AUC (AUROC) for T1D versus controls was 0.86 (P < 0.001, specificity = 73.9%, sensitivity = 83.3%) among all Caucasian subjects and 0.90 for Hispanic Caucasians (P < 0.001, specificity = 86.5%, sensitivity = 84.4%). Age-at-diagnosis negatively correlated with GRS (P < 0.001) and associated with HLA-DR3/DR4 diplotype. Conversely, GRS was less robust (AUROC = 0.75) and did not correlate with age-of-diagnosis for African Americans. Our findings confirm GRS should be further used in Caucasian populations to assign T1D risk for clinical trials designed for biomarker identification and development of personalized treatment strategies. We also highlight the need to develop a GRS model that accommodates racial diversity.Supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health P01 AI42288 (MAA), R01 DK106191 (TMB), UC4 DK104194 (CEM), and from the JDRF Career Development Award (2–2012–280 to TMB). RAO is supported by a Diabetes UK Harry Keen Fellowship. DJP is supported by the JDRF Postdoctoral Fellowship Award (2-PDF-2016-207-A-N)