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

Has the relation between income inequality and life expectancy disappeared? Evidence from Italy and top industrialised countries

Objective: To investigate the relation between income inequality and life expectancy in Italy and across wealthy nations.Design and setting: Measure correlation between income inequality and life expectancy at birth within Italy and across the top 21 wealthy countries. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to study these relations. Multivariate linear regression was used to measure the association between income inequality and life expectancy at birth adjusting for per capita income, education, and/or per capita gross domestic product.Data sources: Data on the Gini coefficient ( income inequality), life expectancy at birth, per capita income, and educational attainment for Italy came from the surveys on Italian household on income and wealth 1995-2000 and the National Institute of Statistics information system. Data for industrialised nations were taken from the United Nations Development Program's human development indicators database 2003.Results: In Italy, income inequality (beta = -0.433; p 0.05). In cross national analyses, income inequality had a strong negative correlation with life expectancy at birth (r =-0.864; p < 0.001).Conclusions: In Italy, a country where health care and education are universally available, and with a strong social safety net, income inequality had an independent and more powerful effect on life expectancy at birth than did per capita income and educational attainment. Italy had a moderately high degree of income inequality and an average life expectancy compared with other wealthy countries. The cross national analyses showed that the relation between income inequality and population health has not disappeared

The impact of education expenditures on income inequality: Evidence from US states

While the effect of various types of government expenditures on income inequality has been studied extensively, whether education expenditures impacts income inequality is less clear. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between education expenditures and income inequality. Specifically, I explore the impact of tertiary versus primary and secondary education spending on income inequality using panel data for 50 US states over the period 1987-2015. Using an ordinary least squares model with time and state fixed effects, I find that total and disaggregated education expenditures have a significant inequality-reducing effect on the income distribution. The findings support continued spending policies at all levels of education as a way to reduce income inequality

Is Income Inequality Endogenous in Regional Growth?

This study focuses on testing the relationship between income inequality and growth within U.S. counties, and the channels through which such effects are observed. The study tests three hypotheses: (1) income inequality has an inverse relationship with growth; (2) regional growth adjustments are the channels through which the inequality and growth are equilibrated; and (3) income inequality is endogenous to regional growth and its adjustment. Results, based on a system of equations estimation, confirm the hypotheses that income inequality has a growth dampening effect; income inequality is endogenous to regional growth and growth adjustment; and the channels through which income inequality determines growth are regional growth adjustments, such as migration and regional adjustment in job and income growth. Results have numerous policy implications: (1) to the extent that income inequality is endogenous, its equilibrium level can be internally determined within a regional growth process; (2) to the extent that traditional income inequality mitigating policies have indirect effect on overall regional growth, they may have unintended indirect effects on income inequality; and (3) to the extent that regional growth adjustment also equilibrates income inequality, such forces can be utilized as policy instruments to mitigate income inequality, and its growth dampening effects hence forth.Income inequality, economic growth, Gini coefficient, growth modeling, population change, per capita income, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Public Economics, I32, J15, O18, P25, R11, R23, R25, R51, R53, R58,

Neighborhood income inequality

This paper offers a descriptive empirical analysis of the geographic pattern of income inequality within a sample of 359 US metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2000. Specifically, we decompose the variance of metropolitan area-level household income into two parts: one associated with the degree of variation among household incomes within neighborhoods - defined by block groups and tracts - and the other associated with the extent of variation among households in different neighborhoods. Consistent with previous work, the results reveal that the vast majority of a city’s overall income inequality - at least three quarters - is driven by within-neighborhood variation rather than between-neighborhood variation, although we find that the latter rose significantly during the 1980s, especially between block groups. We then identify a number of metropolitan area-level characteristics that are associated with both levels of and changes in the degree of each type of residential income inequality.Income distribution ; Income

Rural non-farm income and inequality in Nigeria:

"This paper investigates the contribution of rural non-farm income to income inequality by examining the contribution of specific income sources (farm income from irrigated agriculture, farm income from rainfed agriculture and non-farm income) to income inequality in Nigeria. The results reveal the relative importance of specific income sources to income inequality and the various determinants of income inequality in rural Nigeria. Although non-farm income is distributed more unequally than incomes from the other two sources, it contributes least to overall income inequality. Farm income from irrigated agriculture represents the most important inequality-increasing source of income." from authors' abstractNon-farm income, Inequality, Development strategies,

Pensioner income inequality

One-and-a-half million pensioners are dependent on the minimum means-tested benefit, income support. But the numbers on income support have barely changed in two decades despite substantial increases in its value and that of its precursor, supplementary benefit. At least another 2 million receive means-tested housing benefit or council tax benefit. At the same time, in 1992-93, 3 million pensioners paid over £5 billion in income tax, a small minority at the higher rate of income tax. Pensioners are poorer than the working population, and some are on very low incomes, but they are not uniformly poor.

Local income inequality

Income distribution