Changing Patterns in the Distribution of Economic Welfare: An Economic Perspective

by Edited by Peter Gottschalk , Bjorn A. Gustafsson , Edward E. Palmer

• ISBN13: 9780521562621
• ISBN10: 0521562627
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book examines the income distributional experience of fifteen developed economies - representing a wide range of social and economic strategies - over the past two decades. Experts from each of the countries have carefully documented the pattern of distributional change in individual earnings and household income in their countries and analysed the driving forces behind these changes. Separate chapters are devoted to the experiences of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, West and former East Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The authors examine the effects on the inequality of household income of the development of individual earnings, unemployment, inflation, public sector transfers and taxes, and demographic changes.

Table of Contents

List of contributors
1 What's behind the increase in inequality? An introduction	1	(11)
PETER GOTTSCHALK
BJORN GUSTAFSSON
EDWARD PALMER
2 Policy changes and growing earnings inequality in the US and six other OECD countries	12	(24)
PETER GOTTSCHALK
3 A survey of income inequality over the last twenty years -- how does the UK compare?	36	(24)
KAREN GARDINER
4 Economic adjustment and distributional change: income inequality and poverty in Australia in the 1980s	60	(24)
PETER SAUNDERS
5 Unemployment, unemployment insurance and the distribution of income in Canada in the 1980s	84	(24)
LARS OSBERG
SADETTIN ERKSOY
SHELLEY PHIPPS
6 Distribution of economic well-being in Japan: towards a more unequal society	108	(24)
TOSHIAKI TACHIBANAKI
TADASHI YAGI
7 Income inequality and poverty under transition from rapid inflation to stabilisation: Israel, 1979-1990	132	(22)
LEA ACHDUT
8 Changes in inequality in Greece in the 1970s and the 1980s	154	(30)
PANOS TSAKLOGLOU
9 The development of income distribution in the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1970s and 1980s	184	(36)
RICHARD HAUSER
IRENE BECKER
10 Income inequality and poverty in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s	220	(19)
TIM CALLAN
BRIAN NOLAN
11 Income distribution in France: the mid 1980s turning point	239	(26)
PIERRE CONCIALDI
12 The distribution of economic well-being in the Netherlands, its evolution in the 1980s and the role of demographic change	265	(28)
RUUD MUFFELS
JAN NELISSEN
13 Changes in Swedish inequality: a study of equivalent income, 1975-1991	293	(33)
BJORN GUSTAFSSON
EDWARD PALMER
14 Income inequality and poverty in Finland in the 1980s	326	(25)
MARKUS JANTTI
VELI-MATTI RITAKALLIO
15 Disparities in the economic well-being of Hungarian society from the late 1970s to the 1980s	351	(19)
ODON ELTETO
16 The emergence of the labour market and earnings distribution: the case of the Czech Republic	370	(19)
JIRI VECERNIK
Name index	389	(4)
Subject index	393