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The triple impact of school closures on educational inequality

Source: VoxEU CEPR

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.”

-Horace Mann, 1848

Quite ironically, however, the pandemic-induced school closures and other aspects of remote education pose the threat of deep and long-lasting inequalities. This column argues that channels operating through schools, peer effects, and parental investments have all contributed to massively growing educational inequality during the Covid-19 crisis. Among 9th graders, children from low-income neighborhoods in the US are predicted to suffer a learning loss equivalent to almost half a point on the four-point GPA scale, whereas children from high-income neighborhoods remain unscathed.

Source: VoxEU CEPR

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.”

-Horace Mann, 1848

Quite ironically, however, the pandemic-induced school closures and other aspects of remote education pose the threat of deep and long-lasting inequalities. This column argues that channels operating through schools, peer effects, and parental investments have all contributed to massively growing educational inequality during the Covid-19 crisis.

Read the full article…

Posted by at 1:52 PM

Labels: Inclusive Growth

Inequality and Health Crises

The outbreak of the novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has exacerbated economic and social inequalities. Several studies have tried to capture the impact of the same using extensive qualitative and quantitative data, spanning diverse categories like economic backgrounds, geographical regions, sex, caste, color, and other such social identities, inter alia.

The NBER paper, Inequality in the Times of a Pandemic (2022), by Stefanie Stantcheva, maps findings “related to inequalities across the income distribution, sectors and regions, gender, and inequalities in education inputs for children from different socioeconomic backgrounds”.

On similar lines but delving deeper on the issue of income inequalities, the paper, Epidemics, pandemics and income inequality (2022) in Health Economics Review attempts to understand how the outbreak of diseases like the Coronavirus, Ebola, Avian flu, etc., have impacted income distributions in the first two decades of the 21st century. The paper develops a model that indicates a positive association between these health crises and income inequality. To empirically test theoretical predictions, it explores the effect on the Gini coefficient of a dummy variable that indicates the occurrence of an epidemic or a pandemic in a country in a given year and the number of deaths per 100,000. To properly address potential endogeneity, the authors implement a Three-Stage-Least Squares technique. The estimation shows that the number of deaths per 100,000 population variable has a statistically significant positive effect on the Gini coefficient, especially when COVID-19 data is included.

The outbreak of the novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has exacerbated economic and social inequalities. Several studies have tried to capture the impact of the same using extensive qualitative and quantitative data, spanning diverse categories like economic backgrounds, geographical regions, sex, caste, color, and other such social identities, inter alia.

The NBER paper, Inequality in the Times of a Pandemic (2022), by Stefanie Stantcheva, maps findings “related to inequalities across the income distribution,

Read the full article…

Posted by at 8:13 AM

Labels: Inclusive Growth

Tackling regional inequality “while we wait for levelling up”

Source: Financial Times

Territorial inequality of productivity is the core problem; it is what causes inequality of incomes that can only partly be remedied by redistribution. It also suggests an enormous amount of waste — if lagging regions could close at least some of their productivity shortfall, a lot of prosperity would be gained.

This article delves into ways in which policymakers can deal with regional inequality in the UK, as the wait for further governmental action on it continues. It discusses some aspects on which productivity growth depends, like “slow-to-acquire resources such as infrastructure and skilled labour” and “productive businesses choosing to expand”. Further, it goes on to suggest measures by which this regionally lagging productivity growth can be remedied and ways to target such policies better.

Click here to read the full article.

Related Reading:

The Great Divide: Regional Inequality and Fiscal Policy

Source: Financial Times

Territorial inequality of productivity is the core problem; it is what causes inequality of incomes that can only partly be remedied by redistribution. It also suggests an enormous amount of waste — if lagging regions could close at least some of their productivity shortfall, a lot of prosperity would be gained.

This article delves into ways in which policymakers can deal with regional inequality in the UK,

Read the full article…

Posted by at 10:45 AM

Labels: Inclusive Growth

Correlates of declining income inequality in emerging and developing nations

In an upcoming publication for World Development titled, ‘The correlates of declining income inequality among emerging and developing economies during the 2000s’ (2022), author Edward Anderson of the University of East Anglia discusses patterns that were frequently observed in countries that experienced declining levels of income inequality.

Among the most significant results of the paper, one states that “the tendency toward declining inequality in the 2000s was stronger in countries with higher initial levels of inequality and larger increases in relative agricultural productivity, country-specific primary commodity prices, and remittance inflows.” (Furceri and Loungani, 2018) “The results suggest that the challenge now facing many emerging and developing countries is how to sustain the reductions in inequality achieved since the early 2000s, given the decline in commodity prices since 2015, and the social and economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic”, the paper adds.

Click here to read the full paper.

In an upcoming publication for World Development titled, ‘The correlates of declining income inequality among emerging and developing economies during the 2000s’ (2022), author Edward Anderson of the University of East Anglia discusses patterns that were frequently observed in countries that experienced declining levels of income inequality.

Among the most significant results of the paper, one states that “the tendency toward declining inequality in the 2000s was stronger in countries with higher initial levels of inequality and larger increases in relative agricultural productivity,

Read the full article…

Posted by at 12:16 PM

Labels: Inclusive Growth

Inequality in India Declined during COVID

In a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, authors Arpit Gupta of NYU Stern School of Business, and Anup Malani and Bartosz Woda of the University of Chicago Law School write about inequality in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. The abstract of the paper is as follows:

“We use a large, representative panel data set from India with monthly data on household finances to examine the incidence of economic harms during the COVID pandemic. We observe a sharp spike in poverty, peaking during India’s sharp but short lockdown. However, there was a striking decrease in income inequality outside the lockdown. There was a smaller decrease in consumption inequality, likely due to consumption smoothing. Evidence supports two mechanisms for the decline in income inequality: the capital income of top-quartile earners covaries more with aggregate income, and demand for labor fell more for higher quartiles.”

Click here to read the full paper.

In a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, authors Arpit Gupta of NYU Stern School of Business, and Anup Malani and Bartosz Woda of the University of Chicago Law School write about inequality in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. The abstract of the paper is as follows:

“We use a large, representative panel data set from India with monthly data on household finances to examine the incidence of economic harms during the COVID pandemic.

Read the full article…

Posted by at 9:41 AM

Labels: Inclusive Growth

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