In Search of Smoking Guns: What Makes Income Inequality Vary over Time in Different Countries?

The Politics of Poverty: Left Political Institutions, the Welfare State, and Poverty

“…For some time now, scholars have established a link between Left political institutions and inequality. Probably partly because data traditionally has been much more available on inequality than poverty, the political sources of inequality has been established much more thoroughly than the study of poverty (Alderson and Nielsen 2002;Gustafsson and Johansson 1999;Wallace et al 1999). Importantly, however, the exclusive focus on inequality seems somewhat unbalanced.…”

“…For example, Gustafsson and Johansson (1999) find that while welfare transfers have no effect, unionization significantly reduces inequality. Wallerstein (1999) also demonstrates that labor market institutions such as wage coordination, union concentration, and collective bargaining arrangements, are more important than any other variables for earnings inequality.…”

“…5 Following the methodological and substantive motivations of similar analyses of inequality and poverty (e.g. Alderson andNielsen 1999, 2002;Brady 2002Brady , 2003bGustafsson and Johansson 1999), I present RE models. First, and most importantly, both crossnational and historical variation are crucial to the theoretical questions of interest.…”

State Transfers, Taxes and Income Inequality in Brazil

“…In several developed countries, public work contributes to reduced inequality (BLAU AND KAHN, 1996;GUSTAFSSON and JOHANSSON, 1999;MILANOVIC, 1994). This is not the case in Brazil.…”

“…These studies found that public work contributes to reduced inequality (BLAU and KAHN, 1996;GUSTAFSSON and JOHANSSON, 1999;MILANOVIC, 1994), that strong unions and centralized bargaining of wages typical of public workers are determinants of lower levels of income inequality (CHECCHI and GARCÍA-PEÑALOSA, 2010;GOTTSCHALK and SMEEDING, 1997;GUSTAFSSON and JOHANSSON, 1999) and that corporatist welfare state policies are more capable of reducing inequality than targeted policies because of the "paradox of redistribution", that is, (contributory) universalism legitimizes more spending than targeting and it is the level of expenditures that matters most to inequality (GOUDSWAARD and CAMINADA, 2010;KORPI and PALME, 1998;MAHLER and JESUIT, 2006;SMEEDING, 2005).…”