Growth, Inequality, and Social Welfare : Cross-Country Evidence
Social welfare functions that assign weights to individuals based on their income levels can be used to document the relative importance of growth and inequality changes for changes in social welfare. In a large panel of industrial and developing c...
Main Authors: | , , |
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Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/04/19431734/growth-inequality-social-welfare-cross-country-evidence http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18329 |
Summary: | Social welfare functions that assign
weights to individuals based on their income levels can be
used to document the relative importance of growth and
inequality changes for changes in social welfare. In a large
panel of industrial and developing countries over the past
40 years, most of the cross-country and over-time variation
in changes in social welfare is due to changes in average
incomes. In contrast, the changes in inequality observed
during this period are on average much smaller than changes
in average incomes, are uncorrelated with changes in average
incomes, and have contributed relatively little to changes
in social welfare. |
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