Many commentators have seen the growing gap in earnings and income between those with a college education and those without as a major cause of increasing inequality in the United States and elsewhere. In this article we investigate the extent to which increasing the educational attainment of the US population might ameliorate inequality. We use data from NLSY79 and carry out a three-level decomposition of total inequality into within-person, between-person and betweeneducation parts. We find that the between-education contribution to inequality is small, even when we consider only adjusted inequality that omits the within-person component. We carry out a number of simulations to gauge the likely impact on inequality of changes in the distribution of education and of a narrowing of the differences in average incomes between those with different levels of education. We find that any feasible educational policy is likely to have only a minor impact on income inequality.

Adult children’s labor market status and their type of marriage are major channels through which family advantages are passed from one generation to the next. However, these two routes are seldom studied together. We develop a theoretical approach to incorporate marriage entry and marital sorting into the intergenerational transmission of family income, accounting for differences between sons and daughters and considering education as a central explanatory factor. Using a novel decomposition method applied to data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that marriage plays a major role in intergenerational transmission only among daughters and not until they reach their late-30s. This is more salient in the recent cohort in our data (people born 1963 to 1975). Marital status and marital sorting are comparably important in accounting for the role of marriage, but sorting becomes more important over cohorts. The increasing earnings returns to education over a husband’s career and the weakening association between parental income and daughter’s own earnings explain why marital sorting, and marriage overall, have been growing more important for intergenerational transmission from parents to their daughters.

OBJECTIVE There is limited evidence on the association of sustained low-income status, income changes, and all-cause mortality risk in individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Using the Korean Health Insurance Service database, we studied 1,923,854 adults with T2D (aged ≥30 years) without cardiovascular disease and cancer, who were enrolled from 2009 through 2012 and followed to the end of 2020 (median 10.8 years of follow-up). We defined income levels based on the amount of health insurance premiums and categorized them into quartiles, the first being the low-income group, and assessed the income status annually in the preceding 5 years. Cox proportional hazards models were used to quantify the association of low-income status and income changes with mortality, with adjustment for sociodemographic factors, comorbidities, and diabetes duration and treatment. RESULTS Participants who consecutively had low income showed a higher risk of mortality (hazard ratio [HR] 1.19; 95% CI 1.16–1.22), compared with those who had never been in the low-income group. This association was much stronger for consecutive recipients of Medical Aid, reflecting very-low-income status (HR 2.26; 95% CI 2.16–2.36), compared with those who had never been Medical Aid beneficiaries. Sustained low- and very-low-income status was associated with increased risk of mortality, specifically for younger adults (aged<40 years) and males. Those who experienced declines in income between the first (preceding 5 years) and the last (baseline) time points had an increased risk of mortality, regardless of baseline income status. CONCLUSIONS Among Korean adults with T2D, sustained low-income status and declines in income were associated with increased risk of mortality.

No abstract

No abstract