Income Distribution in Turkey during the Global Financial Crisis

The aim of this study is to examine mechanism responsible for the behavior of the income and earning inequality in Turkey during the global financial crisis based on data from the 2006 to 2014 Income and Living Conditions Survey. Gini decomposition by income source is employed in order to provide an analysis of the contribution of the various income sources to the evolution of income inequality and to assess the impact of a marginal percentage change in the income from a particular source on income inequality. For examining the contributions of specific variables (education, position in occupation, economic sector) to the interpretation of labor earnings inequality in terms of their gross and marginal contribution, we use static decomposition of Theil T index.

Returns to Education and Earning Inequality Nexus: A Micro-Econometric Analysis for Pakistan

This study investigates nexus between returns to education and earning inequality in Pakistan. The study utilizes quantile regression method to demonstrate how effect of different levels of education varies across conditional earning distribution. The results show that education plays a significant role in determination of within group earning inequality at all levels of education. Within group earning inequality is higher within the individuals having tertiary education as compared to the individuals having secondary and primary education. The earning inequality does not remain constant within the education groups during 2005-07. Moreover, education also causes earning inequality between educational groups. The findings of the study reveal that education has a positive effect on within as well as between groups earning inequality.

Self-employment and earning inequality

The present study attempts to explain the difference in observed earning inequality between self-employment and wage-employment in Switzerland in 1992, 1995 and 2000. We use several measures of inequality in order both to determine the factors affecting income dispersion in the two groups and to identify the variables that drive the earning inequality differential. Thus, we make use of discrete decomposition techniques and of a regression-based method. The latter allows us to introduce a selection term in our decompositions which is of crucial importance in the case of self-employment. Our results indicate that education- and age-related variables, like work experience and tenure, are the most important factors explaining the inequality level in both groups. The importance of these factors seems, however, to be larger in the wage-employment sector. The reason may lie in the process of selection into selfemployment rather than in the differences in the returns to characteristics between the two sectors.

Ethnicity, Class and the Earning Inequality in Israel, 1983-1995

This paper focuses on the role of ethnicity and class in generating earnings inequality in Israel. Unlike previous studies on inequality of opportunities in Israel, in this paper I compare the earnings of five ethnic groups: European Jews (Ashkenazi), Asian-African Jews (Sephardi), Muslim Palestinians, Christian Palestinians and Druze Palestinians. In addition, both men and women are taken into account. The analysis, which is based on data obtained from the 1983 and 1995 Israeli population censuses, has revealed that in Israel, class variations resulting from the differentiation of employment contracts in the labour market, appear to have played a much more important role over time in producing earnings inequality. However, at the same time, it was found that class in this context is highly related to ethnicity, thereby suggesting that class and ethnicity are interwoven. While it seemed that to some extent, class plays a similar role among men and women, the role of ethnicity among men was much more central than it was among women, in the allocation of people into class positions.

Educational Choice, Lifetime Earnings Inequality and Conflicts of Public Policy

Drawing on and extending the theory of human capital, a comprehensive life-cycle model of individual earnings is designed. The approach taken permits an isolated analysis of three interconnected levels of aggregation (intra-cohort distribution, overall distribution, and lifetime distribution) within the same dynamic microeconomic model of educational choice. In this way, interrelated economic, demographic, and fiscal effects on earning inequality are established. The paper reveals that reallocation reaction of optimizing individuals, combined with population heterogeneity by productive endowments, learning abilities and working age, can destroy simple relationships between the standard of living, current earnings inequality, and public distributional policy.