assessing the effects of wives earnings on family income inequality we argue that the effect of wives earnings can be assessed meaningfully only by comparing the observed distribution of income with a reference distribution the components of the standard decomposition of the gini coefficient have no implicit reference distribution and therefore should not be interpreted as a measure of the effect of an income source on inequality we suggest several intuitive counterfactual reference distributions and illustrate their use with 1979 and 1989 u s data we conclude that wives earnings reduced inequality in that the income distribution would have been less equal in their absence alternative measures of the impact have mixed results

household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

the impacts of international migration on remaining household members omnibus results from a migration lottery program this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled the impacts of international migration on remaining household members omnibus results from a migration lottery program conducted in 2002 in tonga the study observed the impact of migration lottery program on the remaining household members of tongan emigrants on the individual and intra household level income falls rapidly by 22 to 25 percent with a rise in remittances failing to offset a large fall in labor earnings ownership of livestock durable and access to financial services is lower for the remaining household members diets change to be less nutritious and more rice and root crops immigration has a negative impact on household size there is no significant impact of migration on labor supply for men nor women funding for the study derived from the world bank stanford university the waikato management school and mardsen fund

a cook s tour towards a framework for measuring the social impact of social purpose organisations for over 50 years operational researchers have advocated that operational research or could be considered as a useful set of ideas and methods for the benefit of society however this aspiration while still chiming today has yet to realise its full potential this paper focuses on organisations whose remit is to alleviate social problems and therefore have a social purpose they are under considerable pressure to demonstrate the impact of the work they do however showing the value of these organisations is not easy the paper contributes to this research gap by developing a framework for measuring the impact of social purpose organisations this is accomplished by bringing together current research on sen s capability approach and configurational theory and arguing for an integrative view to show the value of social purpose organisations

international migration the brain drain and poverty a cross country analysis the aim of the paper is threefold first it empirically investigates the effect of international migration on poverty in origin countries using data from a cross country analysis second it explores the specific part of the income distribution from which migrants are drawn by comparing the effect of international migration on different income quintiles of the population finally given that the selection of migrants depends not only on the income level of their households but also on the skill levels of movers the paper casts some light on the implications of the emigration of skilled workers on poverty this article shows that the stock of international migrants have a positive effect on the income of the poor while it does not have a significant impact on the income of the middle and top quintiles of the population in particular a 10 per cent increase in the per capita stock of migrants resident in oecd nations augments the income of the poor by 1 per cent on average and ceteris paribus finally the poverty reducing effect of migration holds even when the emigration process selects the best and the brightest

exploring income inequality in rural coastal viet nam income inequality has been rising in parallel with the economic liberalisation process in the former centrally planned economies the opportunities for non agricultural income associated with the market liberalisation process in former centrally planned economies would seem to be important in determining inequality within the rural sector this article reviews the trends in inequality in viet nam examining differential trends and hypothesised causes inequality is important because of its relationship to other factors in the evolution of the agricultural economy such as the incidence of poverty and the sustainability of emerging income sources this article analyses income inequality based on data collected by the author in two districts in coastal northern viet nam the results demonstrate that non agricultural income sources specifically aquaculture and wage and remittance contribute more to present inequality than any other income source simulation shows that the emergence of aquaculture since the l

remittances and inequality in this paper the authors propose a framework and develop techniques for analyzing the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size and subsequently its impact on rural welfare household data are used to assign numerical coefficients to the impact of net remittances from both internal and international migrants on income inequality in 2 mexican villages the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size depends critically on the degree to which migration opportunities become diffused through the village population on the returns to human capital embodied in remittances and on the distribution of potentially remittance enhancing skills and education across village households our empirical findings demonstrate that in a village where many households contain internal migrants but few have experience migrating to the u s remittances from mexico to us migrants have an unequalizing impact on village incomes while remittances from internal migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution by contrast in a village with a long historyh of sending migrants to the us and hence a more ready access to us labor markets us to mexico remittances have an equalizing impact on incomes remittances from internal migrants in this village however embody a large human capital component and are highly correlated with household income hence internal migrant remittances account for a comparatively large share of inequalities in the 2nd village the overall effect of remittances on income inequality is favorable in both villages migration type migration stage and interaction terms all appear to play a role in this context the effects of small changes in remittances upon income inequality and rural welfare in the 2 villages are explored and some implications for migration and rural development policy are considered authors modified

international migration and income distribution in the philippines the author uses data on remittances from migrants to determine the effects of migration on household income and its distribution in the philippines i briefly describe the evolution of household income distribution using fies the family income and expenditure survey and the characteristics of households that receive income from migrants and those that do not i discuss the analytical framework that is used and outline the changes in incomes and inequality that emigration causes excerpt

migration remittances and inequality a sensitivity analysis using the extended gini index abstract this paper uses the extended gini inequality index to examine the sensitivity of measurements of impacts of migrant remittances on the distribution of household income by size to different value judgements when measuring inequality the results illustrate the robustness of earlier findings that the impacts of migration on village income distributions differ for different types of migration and for different periods in a village s migration history the magnitude of these impacts however appears to be quite sensitive to the weights attached to incomes at different points in the village income distribution for example in a village with considerable mexico to u s migration experience remittances from mexico to u s migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution however the extended gini analysis shows that this favorable impact decreases as more weight is attached to incomes in the poorest households this finding is consistent with the view that barriers to high paying mexico to u s migration work exist for households at the bottom of the village income distribution

remittances and development in latin america flows of workers remittances have become a major source of external finance for developing countries and are particularly important in latin america and the caribbean where they are estimated to have reached 40 billion in 2004 not surprisingly academics policymakers and development practitioners in general have been devoting increasing attention to the potential development impact that these flows may have on receiving countries this paper contributes to this debate along four dimensions first it reviews the evolution of remittances flows to latin america using balance of payments data and compares these statistics with estimates of remittances income based on household surveys second the paper describes the varying profile of remittances recipients in ten latin american countries third the paper reviews the few macro and microeconomic studies that have estimated the impact of remittances on poverty and inequality finally the paper expands some of the existing works to investigate the extent to which that impact is different in latin america and varies across countries in the region

intraindustry specialization in production and trade in newly industrializing countries a conceptual framework and some empirical evidence from east asia abstract this paper argues that as newly industrializing countries continue on a path of industrialization led growth and development their pattern of manufacturing production and trade specialization tends to resemble that of the industrial countries consequently the importance of intraindustry specialization in production and trade in certain manufactures increases in newly industrializing countries this hypothesis is tested in the analysis of intraindustry trade in manufactures of east asian newly industrializing countries as expected the economic development and industrial growth of these countries is accompanied by growth in intraindustry trade in manufactures a substantial proportion of this trade is with industrial countries

life in a mexican village a sam perspective this article employs a social accounting matrix sam to analyse the economic structure of a migrant sending rural economy a village sam is constructed using 1982 household data from a major migrant sending village in central mexico the village matrix multiplier and its decompositions are derived from the sam and are utilised in policy experiments on the production value added income and investment flows of the village the results highlight the central role of both internal and international migration in the village economy as well as the importance of targeting directly anti poverty policies toward the landless

transforming rural economies migration income generation and inequality in rural mexico abstract we analyse how migration shapes the distribution and sources of rural income using nationally representative panel data from mexico income source gini decompositions provide some support for the migration diffusion hypothesis nevertheless migration s influence on other income sources and household re ranking substantially alter distributional impacts we find significant impacts of migration on non remittance income as well as changes in the effects of non migration activities on inequality over time we conclude that migration is transforming rural economies in ways that go beyond the scope of most past research on migration and inequality

few opportunities much desperation the dichotomy of non agricultural activities and inequality in western kenya summary using data from western kenya we confirm the existence of a dichotomous non agricultural sector the poverty and inequality implications of the differently motivated diversification strategies only partly correspond to expected patterns while high return activities are indeed confined to richer households low return activities constitute an important income source for households across the entire income distribution finally we examine the wider implications of our findings for rural livelihoods we find that only engagement in high return non agricultural activities is significantly associated with increased agricultural productivity it seems that such high return activities play a key role in triggering cumulative effects of relative livelihood success

the shadow value of migrant remittances income and inequality in a household farm economy this article offers econometric evidence that income remittances sent home by family migrants stimulate household farm incomes indirectly by relieving credit and risk constraints on household farm production a high but unequally distributed shadow value of migrant remittances appears to reinforce an equalising direct effect of remittances on the income distribution across a sample of household farms in rural mexico

intra industry trade and revealed comparative advantage in the central american common market abstract in this paper intra regional trade among central american countries is analyzed from two perspectives intra industry trade iit and revealed comparative advantage the results show moderate to low levels of iit and the presence of many products with revealed comparative advantage this indirect test of trade theories for intra central american trade favors the heckscher ohlin theorem over the new theories based on increasing returns and product differentiation this suggestion however should not be taken as conclusive since they are not direct tests of the theories of international trade

imperfect competition and returns to scale in a newly industrialising economy a general equilibrium analysis of korean trade policy abstract a general equilibrium analysis of industrial protection in korea is presented using a model which incorporates imperfect competition and scale economies the results suggest that in spite of the strong performance of the korean economy significant additional income of about 7 of gdp might have been generated via lengthened production runs and increased labour productivity in manufacturing had less distortionary policies been used some of the observed distortions may however have been essential to sustain stable political coalitions while this has not been taken into account the analysis nevertheless lends support to the view that industrial organisation is particularly important in analysing trade reforms in newly industrialising countries even though the best reforms are still those which balance incentives within and across sectors

shocks income and wealth do they affect the extraction of natural resources by rural households summary this paper examines the effects of household and village level characteristics on environmental reliance and participation in resource extraction decisions unlike previous analyses that used case studies or regional samples i use a nationally representative sample of rural households rounds i and ii of the mexico national rural household survey enhrum econometric results show that participation in resource extraction follows an inverted u shaped relationship with income and that environmental reliance decreases with income beyond income results show that relatively wealthy households in rural mexico are less likely to participate in resource extraction and have lower reliance than those with less wealth there is also clear evidence that natural resources provide some sort of insurance for households that are subjected to negative agricultural shocks

the impact of migration on rural poverty and inequality a case study in china large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in china migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income this article examines the impact of rural to urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in a mountainous area of hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey since migration income is a potential substitute for farm income we present counterfactual scenarios of what rural income poverty and inequality would have been in the absence of migration our results show that by providing alternatives to households with lower marginal labor productivity in agriculture migration leads to an increase in rural income in contrast to many studies that suggest that the increasing share of nonfarm income in total income widens inequality this article offers support for the hypothesis that migration tends to have egalitarian effects on rural income for three reasons 1 migration is rational self selection farmers with higher expected return in agricultural activities and or in local nonfarm activities choose to remain in the countryside while those with higher expected return in urban nonfarm sectors migrate 2 households facing binding constraints of land supply are more likely to migrate 3 poorer households benefit disproportionately from migration

network effects and the dynamics of migration and inequality theory and evidence from mexico international migration is costly and initially only the middle class of the wealth distribution may have both the means and incentives to migrate which can increase inequality in the sending community however the migration networks formed lower the costs for future migrants which can in turn lower inequality this paper shows both theoretically and empirically that wealth has a nonlinear effect on migration and then examines the empirical evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship between emigration and inequality in rural sending communities in mexico after instrumenting we find that the overall impact of migration is to reduce inequality across communities with relatively high levels of past migration we also find some suggestive evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship among communities with a wider range of migration experiences

income sources effects on inequality abstract based on certain desirable properties a subset of entropy decomposition rules is proposed to assign inequality contributions to different components of income in addition a method of assessing the impact on inequality of marginal changes in income components originally applied to gini index by lerman and yitzhaki the review of economics and statistics 67 1985 151 is extended to other measures of inequality an empirical exercise based on australian income distribution data illustrates the usefulness of the proposed analytical framework

remittances poverty inequality and welfare evidence from the central plateau of burkina faso abstract this paper applies gini and concentration coefficient decomposition as well as the foster greer thorbecke poverty index and the stark yitzhaki welfare index to new data from four villages in burkina faso to compare the marginal effects of remittances from intercontinental and intra african migration on inequality poverty and social welfare evidence is found that intra african remittances reduce inequality while intercontinental remittances have the opposite effect also it is found that although remittances from intercontinental migration are associated with much lower incidence depth and severity of poverty the marginal impact of remittances from this form of migration on social welfare is limited because recipients do not include the rural poor

accounting for selectivity and duration dependent heterogeneity when estimating the impact of emigration on incomes and poverty in sending areas the impacts of international emigration and remittances on incomes and poverty in sending areas are increasingly studied with household survey data but comparing households with and without emigrants is complicated by a triple selectivity problem first households self select into emigration second in some emigrant households everyone moves while others leave members behind and third some emigrants choose to return to the origin country allowing for duration dependent heterogeneity introduces a fourth form of selectivity one must now worry not just about whether households migrate but also when they do so this paper clearly sets out these selectivity issues and their implications for existing migration studies and then addresses them by using survey data designed specifically to take advantage of a randomized lottery that determines which applicants to the over subscribed samoan quota may immigrate to new zealand the analysis compares incomes and poverty rates among left behind members in households in samoa that sent samoan quota emigrants with those for members of similar households that were unsuccessful in the lottery policy rules control who can accompany the principal migrant providing an instrument to address the second selectivity problem while differences among migrants in which year their ballot was selected allow for estimation of duration effects the authors find that migration reduced poverty among former household members but they also find suggestive evidence that this effect may be short lived as both remittances and agricultural income are negatively related to the duration that the migrant has been abroad

brain drain in globalization a general equilibrium analysis from the sending countries perspective according to the economic literature high skilled emigration may either harm or bene t developing economies recent research highlighted several positive and negative channels through which the brain drain operates this paper aims at evaluating the relative magnitudes of various brain drain channels and quantifying their global impact on migrants sending countries for this purpose we develop a 10 region general equilibrium model of the world economy characterized by overlapping generations dynamics our ndings suggest that the short run impact of brain drain on resident human capital is extremely crucial as it affects not only the number of high skilled workers available to domestic production but also the sending economy s capacity to innovate adopt modern technologies this latter effect is particularly important in globalization where capital investments are made in places with high production ef ciencies hence despite positive feedback effects those countries facing prevalent high skilled emigration are the most candid victims to brain drain

impacts of migration and remittances on ethnic income inequality in rural china summary migration is often viewed as the best option for poor rural households to exit out of poverty although the distributional effects of migrants remittances tend to be ambiguous in the literature given that increasing income inequality is a major concern and policy issue this paper examines the impacts of migration and migrants remittances on income inequality in china s rural minority areas using recent proprietary household data treating migrants remittances as a potential substitute for income the results reveal that migration significantly boosts income for all ethnic groups although the returns to ethnic minority households tend to be less than for han households decomposition analyses further reveal that migration increases inequality between ethnic groups despite reducing spatial inequality these countervailing effects imply that the continual transfer of rural urban migrants will likely lead to spatial convergence despite reinforcing ethnic inequalities in rural minority areas importantly the percentage contribution of ethnic inequality to total inequality is larger than that of spatial inequality across sampled rural locations thus highlighting the fact that the ethnic dimension is an important yet often overlooked component of inequality in china

the new economics of labor migration this paper reviews selected theoretical and empirical developments in the field of labor migration economics the migration behavior of individuals differs in accordance with their perceived relative deprivation those who are relatively more deprived tend to have stronger incentive to migrate than those who are relatively less deprived moreover a reference group characterized by more income inequality is likely to generate more relative deprivation highly skilled workers are also more likely to migrate migration decisions are often made jointly by the migrant and nonmigrant with a contractual arrangement regarding the sharing of costs and returns the exchange of commitments to share income provides coinsurance of particular interest are the determinants of the speed of adoption of migration as an innovation and the characteristics associated with the delay in the adoption of innovation new econometric techniques including techniques for the analysis of qualitative dependent variables techniques that correct for sample selection bias and those for the analysis of longitudinal data have substantially benefited empirical research in this area new methods that can correct for the biased estimate of the wages particular individuals would receive at 2 or more locations at the same point in time allow researchers to test locational decsion making models estimates of these structural models of labor migration support the hypothesis that individuals respond to income incentives in making the decsion to migrate further research is needed on the pazzling observation that migrant workers earn less than native born workers with similar characteristics during the 1st few years after migration but more thereafter other topics that need further research include the macroeconomic effects of migration the microeconomic and macroeconomic relationships between aging and labor migration and the migration behavior of dual earner families

on migration and risk in ldcs the authors develop the hypothesis that aversion to risk rather than expectations of higher income is the primary motivation for rural urban migration in developing countries this hypothesis maintains that an optimizing risk averse small farmer family will try to place a family member in the urban sector in order to diversify its income portfolio an additional hypothesis related to risk is also considered at the individual rather than the family level annotation

migration growth distribution and welfare abstract in this note we argue that the inverted u curve of inequality is a technical derivative of the attributes of the conventional indices of inequality that these indices are inadequate measures of the change in welfare associated with the typical distributional consequences of rural to urban migration and that an explicit welfare judgment with respect to this process should and can be made

on the measurement of intra industry trade countries or more specifically newly industrialising countries increased in importance as exporters of manufactures over this period some 6o of the overall expansion of trade in manufactures comprised trade within western europe and north america a phenomenon which appears to have increased in importance as a consequence of the growth of trade between manufacturing nations is intra industry trade i e the simultaneous import and export of commodities classified in the same industry or product group although there are considerable difficulties associated with the computation of a meaningful summary statistic of the importance of intra industry trade relative to total trade a substantial amount of evidence now exists to suggest that intra industry trade has increased in importance to the point where it may account for in excess of 6o of total trade in most developed market economies 2 intra industry trade is important for at least two reasons first accurate measurement of pure intra industry trade can give some indication of the importance of determinants of international exchange other than relative factor proportions recent work has for example emphasised the role of preference diversity and decreasing costs despite attempts to generalise the heckscherohlin model neither of these factors can be comfortably accommodated consequently the heckscher ohlin postulate that countries specialise in and export commodities which use their abundant factor intensively is of little value in explaining intra industry exchange secondly there is a possibility that adjustment to trade expansion may be easier when the expansion takes the form of an increase in intra as opposed to inter industry exchange 3 in order to explore either of these issues empirically or to test any of the models of intraindustry exchange which have emerged in recent years 4 intra industry trade has to be measured as accurately as possible the principal complication with measurement is the unknown influence of categorical aggregation this paper discusses alternative approaches to assessing the influence of categorical aggre

do remittances diminish social violence abstractthis paper represents the first attempt to formalise the relationship between remittances and social violence by developing a model that predicts that migrants remittances lead to the reduction of social violence in the recipient economy under the condition that remittances increase the average product of labour using homicide data as an indicator of social violence we tested our model s prediction controlling for the endogeneity problem with appropriate instruments we found that remittances tend to reduce social violence we performed sensitivity analysis on remittances in the empirical specification and found it robust with an unchanged negative sign

demographic transition family structure and income inequality we treat each age specific income earning member of the family as an income source and use the source specific gini decomposition approach as well as the lorenz comparison approach to study the

immigration and inequality immigration is often viewed as a proximate cause of the rising wage gap between highand low skilled workers nevertheless there is controversy over the appropriate theoretical and empirical framework for measuring the presumed effect and over the precise magnitudes involved this paper offers an overview and synthesis of existing knowledge on the relationship between immigration and inequality focusing on evidence from cross city comparisons in the u s while some researchers have claimed that a cross city research design is inherently flawed i argue that the evidence from cross city comparisons is remarkably consistent with recent findings based on aggregate time series data in particular cross city and aggregate time series comparisons provide support for three key conclusions 1 workers with below high school education are perfect substitutes for those with a high school education 2 high school equivalent and college equivalent workers are imperfect substitutes with an elasticity of substitution on the order of 2 3 within education groups immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes together these results imply that the average impacts of recent immigrant inflows on the relative wages of u s natives are small the effects on overall wage inequality including natives and immigrants are larger reflecting the concentration of immigrants in the tails of the skill distribution and higher residual inequality among immigrants than natives even so immigration accounts for a small share 5 of the increase in u s wage inequality between 1980 and 2000