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On the characterisation and measurement of the welfare effects of income mobility from an ex-ante perspective

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Author Info
Paul Allanson

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Abstract

The paper employs a rank-dependent formulation of the social welfare function with time-separable utilities to evaluate the economic consequences of income mobility from an ex-ante perspective. The resultant class of measures can be decomposed not only in terms of structural and exchange mobility but also in terms of vertical and horizontal mobility, thereby encompassing two of the main approaches in the literature. We illustrate our measurement framework by comparing mobility in the USA and Germany using data from the Cross-National Equivalent File 1980-2005. We find that the pattern of income mobility in the USA was both less pro-poor and more horizontally inequitable than in Germany, but that the latter did not translate into higher levels of exchange mobility given higher levels of absolute inequality and the vertical stance of the growth process.

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File URL: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/econman/discussion/DDPE_219.pdf
File Format: application/pdf
File Function: First version, 2008
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Dundee, Economic Studies in its series Discussion Papers with number 219.

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Length: 27 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:dun:dpaper:219

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Related research
Keywords: income mobility; ex-ante welfare analysis; USA; Germany;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

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    Other versions:
  4. Jacques Silber & Michal Weber, 2005. "Gini's mean difference and the measurement of absolute mobility," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 471-492. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Donaldson, David & Weymark, John A., 1983. "Ethically flexible gini indices for income distributions in the continuum," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 353-358, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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    Other versions:
  20. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2006. "Trends in income inequality, pro-poor income growth, and income mobility," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 531-548, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  21. Van Kerm, Philippe, 2003. "What Lies Behind Income Mobility? Reranking and Distributional Change in Belgium, Western Germany and the USA," IRISS Working Paper Series 2003-03, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD. [Downloadable!]
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    Other versions:
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