New IZA DPs -- Inequality
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IZA Publications
Apr 16, 2025, 1:41:17 PMApr 16
to it...@umich.edu
Dear Italo Gutierrez,
These new IZA Discussion Papers are now available online.
DP 17788 - Preuss/Reyes/Somerville/Wu:
Are Elites Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking? Evidence from MBA Students
DP 17792 - Adermon/Brandén/Nybom:
The Relationship Between Intergenerational Mobility and Equality of Opportunity
DP 17796 - Shui/van den Berg/Mierau/Viluma:
Lifetime Trajectories and Drivers of Socioeconomic Health Disparities: Evidence from Longitudinal Biomarkers in the Netherlands
DP 17808 - Brewer/Cominetti/Jenkins:
What Do We Know About Income and Earnings Volatility?
DP 17809 - Budría/Bravo Chew:
Enduring Inequalities: Analyzing Energy Poverty Inertia Across K-Means Clusters
DP 17814 - Almar/Friedrich/Reynoso/Schulz/Vejlin:
Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality
DP 17820 - Stoyanov/Zubanov:
Exposure to Regulation and Income Inequality in Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the U.S. over the Past Half-Century
DP 17824 - Millimet/Whitacre:
Partisan Mortality Cycles
DP 17826 - Immervoll/Linden/O'Donoghue/Sologon:
Carbon Pricing and Household Burdens in Newly Affluent Countries – an Application to Lithuania
Please find the abstracts and download links below.
You might also be interested in this IZA World of Labor content:
Income inequality and social origins
IZA DP No. 17788
Marcel Preuss, Germán Reyes, Jason Somerville, Joy Wu:
Are Elites Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking? Evidence from MBA Students
Abstract:
Elites disproportionately influence policymaking, yet little is known about their fairness and efficiency preferences–key determinants of support for redistributive policies. We investigate these preferences using an incentivized lab experiment with a group of future elites–Ivy League MBA students. We find that elites implement more unequal earnings distributions than the average American, are highly sensitive to both merit-based inequality and efficiency costs of redistribution, and are less likely to hold strict meritocratic views. These findings provide novel insights into how elites' redistributive preferences may shape high levels of inequality and limited redistributive policy in the United States.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17788.pdf
IZA DP No. 17792
Adrian Adermon, Gunnar Brandén, Martin Nybom:
The Relationship Between Intergenerational Mobility and Equality of Opportunity
Abstract:
Among economists, empirical analysis of social mobility and the role of parental background is largely carried out in two separate strands of research. The intergenerational mobility literature estimates parent-child persistence in a certain outcome of interest, such as income. In contrast, the equality of opportunity literature is rooted in a normative framework, and has only more recently started generating empirical evidence. Intergenerational regressions are relatively straightforward to estimate, but their normative implications are less obvious. In contrast, measures of equality of opportunity have a policy-relelvant interpretation, but are demanding in terms of data, requiring the researcher to observe a large set of determinants of socioeconomic status for large samples. But maybe they capture similar underlying dynamics? We compare the two approaches by estimating equality of opportunity and intergenerational mobility measures — as well as sibling correlations — acro ss 16 cohorts within 126 Swedish local labor markets. We then test to what extent the different measures correlate, resulting in insights on the plausibility of interpreting intergenerational mobility measures as informative about equality of opportunity.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17792.pdf
IZA DP No. 17796
Ailun Shui, Gerard J. van den Berg, Jochen O. Mierau, Laura Viluma:
Lifetime Trajectories and Drivers of Socioeconomic Health Disparities: Evidence from Longitudinal Biomarkers in the Netherlands
Abstract:
This study investigates lifetime socioeconomic health disparities through longitudinal biomarkers from the Dutch Lifelines cohort study and biobank. We construct an allostatic load index from 12 biomarkers and analyze the dynamics of health and its association with socioeconomic status (SES) over the life cycle. Our findings reveal that health risks linked to lower SES emerge early and precede chronic disease onset. Further analysis investigates the drivers of allostatic load and emphasizes health behaviors. The results highlight the need for early interventions targeting SES-related health disparities and provide new insights into the physiological pathways linking SES to long-term health outcomes.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17796.pdf
IZA DP No. 17808
Mike Brewer, Nye Cominetti, Stephen P. Jenkins:
What Do We Know About Income and Earnings Volatility?
Abstract:
We first review research about income and earnings volatility and second provide new UK evidence about the latter using high quality administrative record data. The USA stands out as a high volatility country relative to the UK and other high-income countries, but volatility levels have remained constant in these countries recently. Almost all research has considered volatility from an annual perspective whereas we provide new evidence about month-to-month earnings volatility. There is a distinct within-year seasonal pattern to volatility, and volatility is highest for the top and bottom tenths of earners. High earnings volatility among top earners and its seasonality reflect pay bonus patterns whereas, for low earners, the instability of hours including zero-hours contracts likely play important roles. Our findings have relevance to the design of cash transfer support in the UK because the monthly reference periods it uses do not align with many earners’ pay periods.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17808.pdf
IZA DP No. 17809
Santiago Budría, Leslie Bravo Chew:
Enduring Inequalities: Analyzing Energy Poverty Inertia Across K-Means Clusters
Abstract:
Evidence on how energy poverty persistence and vulnerability to key factors are distributed across different population groups remains scarce. This paper seeks to bridge this gap by analyzing the dynamics and determinants of energy poverty within population clusters. The significance of the paper is highlighted in the integration of a two-stage Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation procedure with K-means cluster analysis. K-means clustering is a fundamental tool within AI to understand and find patterns and structure in data without labeled outputs. Two key findings emerge. First, the degree of energy poverty state dependence varies substantially across clusters, with some segments of the population deeply entrenched and facing significant barriers to escape. Second, variables critical for identifying at-risk groups, such as income and energy prices, exhibit different impacts across clusters. These findings highlight the need for targeted policy interventions tailore d to the specific vulnerabilities of distinct population segments.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17809.pdf
IZA DP No. 17814
Frederik Almar, Benjamin Friedrich, Ana Reynoso, Bastian Schulz, Rune Majlund Vejlin:
Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality
Abstract:
This paper revisits the link between education-based marriage market sorting and income inequality. Leveraging Danish administrative data, we develop a novel categorization of “ambition types” that is based on starting wages and wage growth trajectories associated with detailed educational programs. We find a substantial increase in assortative matching by educational ambition over time, and the marriage market explains more than 40% of increasing inequality since 1980. In contrast, sorting trends are flat with the commonly-used educational level categorization. We conclude that the mapping from education to types matters crucially for conclusions about how education-based marriage market sorting contributes to rising income inequality.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17814.pdf
IZA DP No. 17820
Andrey Stoyanov, Nick Zubanov:
Exposure to Regulation and Income Inequality in Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the U.S. over the Past Half-Century
Abstract:
Existing evidence points to a positive correlation between specific regulations and income inequality at a country or regional level, but little is known about how overall regulatory burden affects inequality at the local labor market level. Our study fills this gap by measuring local exposure to regulation from the industry-relevant articles of U.S. Code of Federal Regulation linked to local industry employment structure in 741 commuting zones (CZs) in the U.S. over the period 1970-2019. Relating our exposure to regulation measure to the CZ-level income inequality, computed from the Census records, we find that heavier regulation is followed by higher income inequality, lower average income and higher unemployment in the affected CZs. The implied effect estimates are sizeable and robust to various checks. We contribute to inequality research by identifying previously unknown, local effects of regulation on income inequality, exploring mechanisms through which they may occur, and demonstrating how available data can be used to produce more granular measures of exposure to regulation.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17820.pdf
IZA DP No. 17824
Daniel L. Millimet, Travis Whitacre:
Partisan Mortality Cycles
Abstract:
Geographic disparities in mortality rates in the US are pronounced and growing. The Black-White mortality gap is volatile but persistent, while the Rich-Poor mortality gap is increasing dramatically. While the causes of these inequalities are not understood, recent attention has focused on the role of place-specific factors. Here, we explore the importance of politics as a place-specific factor contributing to spatial inequality in mortality. Specifically, we test for the existence of partisan mortality cycles using panel data on counties from 1968-2016 and information on the political ideology of state and federal political officials. We confirm the existence of partisan mortality cycles, finding lower mortality in counties governed by more liberal political regimes. Several sources of heterogeneity are also uncovered. While additional research is needed, the analysis here suggests that analyses of spatial, racial, and income differences in mortality ought to start with the political system.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17824.pdf
IZA DP No. 17826
Herwig Immervoll, Jules Linden, Cathal O'Donoghue, Denisa Maria Sologon:
Carbon Pricing and Household Burdens in Newly Affluent Countries – an Application to Lithuania
Abstract:
We assess household burdens from a carbon tax with revenue recycling, comparing them to burdens from price changes during the recent cost-of-living crisis. We focus on Lithuania, an OECD country that attained high-income status a decade ago, and that recently enacted a €60/ton CO2 carbon tax despite a challenging policy context, with high poverty rates and concerns about the affordability of energy. Households spend large parts of their budget on energy, but the impact of the carbon tax on overall cost of living is modest (3% on average), substantially smaller than the impact of inflation between 2021-24 (36%). Direct carbon-tax burdens, from higher fuel prices, fall disproportionately on lower-income households. But indirect effects, from higher prices of goods other than fuel, are sizeable and broadly “flat” across the income distribution, which dampens regressivity. We simulate seven different options for compensating households by recycling carbon-tax revenues back to the m through transfers or by lowering other taxes. When carefully designed, revenue recycling allows considerable scope for cushioning burdens, and for addressing concerns about disproportionate costs for some groups of households and voters.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17826.pdf
Please click here to change your subscription status.
If you have trouble downloading the papers, or for any other questions regarding the IZA Discussion Paper Series, contact public...@iza.org.
These new IZA Discussion Papers are now available online.
DP 17788 - Preuss/Reyes/Somerville/Wu:
Are Elites Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking? Evidence from MBA Students
DP 17792 - Adermon/Brandén/Nybom:
The Relationship Between Intergenerational Mobility and Equality of Opportunity
DP 17796 - Shui/van den Berg/Mierau/Viluma:
Lifetime Trajectories and Drivers of Socioeconomic Health Disparities: Evidence from Longitudinal Biomarkers in the Netherlands
DP 17808 - Brewer/Cominetti/Jenkins:
What Do We Know About Income and Earnings Volatility?
DP 17809 - Budría/Bravo Chew:
Enduring Inequalities: Analyzing Energy Poverty Inertia Across K-Means Clusters
DP 17814 - Almar/Friedrich/Reynoso/Schulz/Vejlin:
Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality
DP 17820 - Stoyanov/Zubanov:
Exposure to Regulation and Income Inequality in Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the U.S. over the Past Half-Century
DP 17824 - Millimet/Whitacre:
Partisan Mortality Cycles
DP 17826 - Immervoll/Linden/O'Donoghue/Sologon:
Carbon Pricing and Household Burdens in Newly Affluent Countries – an Application to Lithuania
Please find the abstracts and download links below.
You might also be interested in this IZA World of Labor content:
Income inequality and social origins
IZA DP No. 17788
Marcel Preuss, Germán Reyes, Jason Somerville, Joy Wu:
Are Elites Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking? Evidence from MBA Students
Abstract:
Elites disproportionately influence policymaking, yet little is known about their fairness and efficiency preferences–key determinants of support for redistributive policies. We investigate these preferences using an incentivized lab experiment with a group of future elites–Ivy League MBA students. We find that elites implement more unequal earnings distributions than the average American, are highly sensitive to both merit-based inequality and efficiency costs of redistribution, and are less likely to hold strict meritocratic views. These findings provide novel insights into how elites' redistributive preferences may shape high levels of inequality and limited redistributive policy in the United States.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17788.pdf
IZA DP No. 17792
Adrian Adermon, Gunnar Brandén, Martin Nybom:
The Relationship Between Intergenerational Mobility and Equality of Opportunity
Abstract:
Among economists, empirical analysis of social mobility and the role of parental background is largely carried out in two separate strands of research. The intergenerational mobility literature estimates parent-child persistence in a certain outcome of interest, such as income. In contrast, the equality of opportunity literature is rooted in a normative framework, and has only more recently started generating empirical evidence. Intergenerational regressions are relatively straightforward to estimate, but their normative implications are less obvious. In contrast, measures of equality of opportunity have a policy-relelvant interpretation, but are demanding in terms of data, requiring the researcher to observe a large set of determinants of socioeconomic status for large samples. But maybe they capture similar underlying dynamics? We compare the two approaches by estimating equality of opportunity and intergenerational mobility measures — as well as sibling correlations — acro ss 16 cohorts within 126 Swedish local labor markets. We then test to what extent the different measures correlate, resulting in insights on the plausibility of interpreting intergenerational mobility measures as informative about equality of opportunity.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17792.pdf
IZA DP No. 17796
Ailun Shui, Gerard J. van den Berg, Jochen O. Mierau, Laura Viluma:
Lifetime Trajectories and Drivers of Socioeconomic Health Disparities: Evidence from Longitudinal Biomarkers in the Netherlands
Abstract:
This study investigates lifetime socioeconomic health disparities through longitudinal biomarkers from the Dutch Lifelines cohort study and biobank. We construct an allostatic load index from 12 biomarkers and analyze the dynamics of health and its association with socioeconomic status (SES) over the life cycle. Our findings reveal that health risks linked to lower SES emerge early and precede chronic disease onset. Further analysis investigates the drivers of allostatic load and emphasizes health behaviors. The results highlight the need for early interventions targeting SES-related health disparities and provide new insights into the physiological pathways linking SES to long-term health outcomes.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17796.pdf
IZA DP No. 17808
Mike Brewer, Nye Cominetti, Stephen P. Jenkins:
What Do We Know About Income and Earnings Volatility?
Abstract:
We first review research about income and earnings volatility and second provide new UK evidence about the latter using high quality administrative record data. The USA stands out as a high volatility country relative to the UK and other high-income countries, but volatility levels have remained constant in these countries recently. Almost all research has considered volatility from an annual perspective whereas we provide new evidence about month-to-month earnings volatility. There is a distinct within-year seasonal pattern to volatility, and volatility is highest for the top and bottom tenths of earners. High earnings volatility among top earners and its seasonality reflect pay bonus patterns whereas, for low earners, the instability of hours including zero-hours contracts likely play important roles. Our findings have relevance to the design of cash transfer support in the UK because the monthly reference periods it uses do not align with many earners’ pay periods.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17808.pdf
IZA DP No. 17809
Santiago Budría, Leslie Bravo Chew:
Enduring Inequalities: Analyzing Energy Poverty Inertia Across K-Means Clusters
Abstract:
Evidence on how energy poverty persistence and vulnerability to key factors are distributed across different population groups remains scarce. This paper seeks to bridge this gap by analyzing the dynamics and determinants of energy poverty within population clusters. The significance of the paper is highlighted in the integration of a two-stage Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation procedure with K-means cluster analysis. K-means clustering is a fundamental tool within AI to understand and find patterns and structure in data without labeled outputs. Two key findings emerge. First, the degree of energy poverty state dependence varies substantially across clusters, with some segments of the population deeply entrenched and facing significant barriers to escape. Second, variables critical for identifying at-risk groups, such as income and energy prices, exhibit different impacts across clusters. These findings highlight the need for targeted policy interventions tailore d to the specific vulnerabilities of distinct population segments.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17809.pdf
IZA DP No. 17814
Frederik Almar, Benjamin Friedrich, Ana Reynoso, Bastian Schulz, Rune Majlund Vejlin:
Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality
Abstract:
This paper revisits the link between education-based marriage market sorting and income inequality. Leveraging Danish administrative data, we develop a novel categorization of “ambition types” that is based on starting wages and wage growth trajectories associated with detailed educational programs. We find a substantial increase in assortative matching by educational ambition over time, and the marriage market explains more than 40% of increasing inequality since 1980. In contrast, sorting trends are flat with the commonly-used educational level categorization. We conclude that the mapping from education to types matters crucially for conclusions about how education-based marriage market sorting contributes to rising income inequality.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17814.pdf
IZA DP No. 17820
Andrey Stoyanov, Nick Zubanov:
Exposure to Regulation and Income Inequality in Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the U.S. over the Past Half-Century
Abstract:
Existing evidence points to a positive correlation between specific regulations and income inequality at a country or regional level, but little is known about how overall regulatory burden affects inequality at the local labor market level. Our study fills this gap by measuring local exposure to regulation from the industry-relevant articles of U.S. Code of Federal Regulation linked to local industry employment structure in 741 commuting zones (CZs) in the U.S. over the period 1970-2019. Relating our exposure to regulation measure to the CZ-level income inequality, computed from the Census records, we find that heavier regulation is followed by higher income inequality, lower average income and higher unemployment in the affected CZs. The implied effect estimates are sizeable and robust to various checks. We contribute to inequality research by identifying previously unknown, local effects of regulation on income inequality, exploring mechanisms through which they may occur, and demonstrating how available data can be used to produce more granular measures of exposure to regulation.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17820.pdf
IZA DP No. 17824
Daniel L. Millimet, Travis Whitacre:
Partisan Mortality Cycles
Abstract:
Geographic disparities in mortality rates in the US are pronounced and growing. The Black-White mortality gap is volatile but persistent, while the Rich-Poor mortality gap is increasing dramatically. While the causes of these inequalities are not understood, recent attention has focused on the role of place-specific factors. Here, we explore the importance of politics as a place-specific factor contributing to spatial inequality in mortality. Specifically, we test for the existence of partisan mortality cycles using panel data on counties from 1968-2016 and information on the political ideology of state and federal political officials. We confirm the existence of partisan mortality cycles, finding lower mortality in counties governed by more liberal political regimes. Several sources of heterogeneity are also uncovered. While additional research is needed, the analysis here suggests that analyses of spatial, racial, and income differences in mortality ought to start with the political system.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17824.pdf
IZA DP No. 17826
Herwig Immervoll, Jules Linden, Cathal O'Donoghue, Denisa Maria Sologon:
Carbon Pricing and Household Burdens in Newly Affluent Countries – an Application to Lithuania
Abstract:
We assess household burdens from a carbon tax with revenue recycling, comparing them to burdens from price changes during the recent cost-of-living crisis. We focus on Lithuania, an OECD country that attained high-income status a decade ago, and that recently enacted a €60/ton CO2 carbon tax despite a challenging policy context, with high poverty rates and concerns about the affordability of energy. Households spend large parts of their budget on energy, but the impact of the carbon tax on overall cost of living is modest (3% on average), substantially smaller than the impact of inflation between 2021-24 (36%). Direct carbon-tax burdens, from higher fuel prices, fall disproportionately on lower-income households. But indirect effects, from higher prices of goods other than fuel, are sizeable and broadly “flat” across the income distribution, which dampens regressivity. We simulate seven different options for compensating households by recycling carbon-tax revenues back to the m through transfers or by lowering other taxes. When carefully designed, revenue recycling allows considerable scope for cushioning burdens, and for addressing concerns about disproportionate costs for some groups of households and voters.
https://docs.iza.org/dp17826.pdf
Please click here to change your subscription status.
If you have trouble downloading the papers, or for any other questions regarding the IZA Discussion Paper Series, contact public...@iza.org.
IZA Publications
Apr 16, 2025, 1:43:15 PMApr 16
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