A common presumption is that increased growth in the aggregate enhances the welfare of both the rich and the poor. I show that instead, as the rich get richer, the welfare of the poor may decline if the underlying growth is asymmetric. There are two distinct and complementary explanations:...

This paper explains how to build Lorenz Curves for income distributions and discusses their use for inequality measurement. A short conceptual background, a step-by-step procedure and a simple numerical example illustrate how to calculate and draw Lorenz Curves. A discussion on the use of Lorenz...

Education as a major human capital determinant of the modern growth models also enters the realm of spatial analysis. Yet, studies investigating the role of spatial distribution of education on income inequalities are rare. Originating from this central discussion, the study aims to understand...

Using panel data for 24 (OECD) countries during the period 1980–2004 this study examines how social trust affects fertility. The major finding through the random effects approach is that the social trust increases the fertility rate. A 1% rise in the trust rate leads to an increase in...

The concept of exploitation is central in social and political theory, but there is no precise, widely accepted definition. This paper analyses John Roemer’s seminal theory, which construes exploitation as a distributive injustice arising from asset inequalities, with no reference to notions...

This paper illustrates how Lorenz Curves can be used to identify the best income distribution on social welfare grounds, within a set of alternative income distributions generated by different policy options. After highlighting some drawbacks of using specific functional forms of the Social...

Cross-national studies on happiness have focused on differences in level of happiness. The focus of this paper is on spread in happiness in the nation, also called ‘inequality in happiness’. Inequality in happiness in nations can be measured by the size of the standard deviation of responses...

Using a simple model of income redistribution, we show that the government may use tax evasion as a way to redistribute income from the non- evaders to evaders. This will result then to a negative association between income inequality and per capita transfers and inefficiently high taxes.

Nepal being the poorest country in the world, poverty remains one of the crucial development agenda in Nepal since it started its development effort in 1956. Therefore, this review paper analyzes the poverty and food insecurity in Nepal. Macro economic indicators of the country i.e., Gross...

Involvement of higher proportion of economically active population in agriculture and laboring among the Occupational caste resulted into higher incidence of poverty, which is also severer and deeper. This resulted into as high as 71% incidence of poverty in Banjhkateri, purely remote village....