IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp3701.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Growth Affect the Nature of Inequality? Ireland 1994–2001

Author

Listed:
  • Doris, Aedin

    (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)

  • O'Neill, Donal

    (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)

  • Sweetman, Olive

    (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)

Abstract

Much has been written about the relationship between economic growth and aggregate inequality in recent years. In this paper we extend this literature by examining whether economic growth affects, not the level, but rather the nature of inequality. To do this we focus on the Irish economy which experienced a remarkable boom starting in 1994. We analyse the covariance structure of earnings in Ireland to examine whether this rapid growth affected earnings dynamics over the period. Using panel data for the years 1994–2001, we show that, while permanent inequality in Ireland is high, the degree of persistence of inequality was not significantly affected by the rapid growth in the economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Doris, Aedin & O'Neill, Donal & Sweetman, Olive, 2008. "Does Growth Affect the Nature of Inequality? Ireland 1994–2001," IZA Discussion Papers 3701, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp3701.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Cappellari, Lorenzo, 2002. "Earnings dynamics and uncertainty in Italy: how do they differ between the private and public sectors?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 477-496, September.
    3. Gustavsson, Magnus, 2004. "Trends in the Transitory Variance of Earnings: Evidence from Sweden 1960-1990 and a Comparison with the United States," Working Paper Series 2004:11, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    4. Chamberlain, Gary, 1984. "Panel data," Handbook of Econometrics, in: Z. Griliches† & M. D. Intriligator (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 1247-1318, Elsevier.
    5. Michael Baker & Gary Solon, 2003. "Earnings Dynamics and Inequality among Canadian Men, 1976-1992: Evidence from Longitudinal Income Tax Records," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 267-288, April.
    6. Magnus Gustavsson, 2007. "The 1990s rise in Swedish earnings inequality -- persistent or transitory?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 25-30.
    7. Haider, Steven J, 2001. "Earnings Instability and Earnings Inequality of Males in the United States: 1967-1991," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(4), pages 799-836, October.
    8. Baker, Michael, 1997. "Growth-Rate Heterogeneity and the Covariance Structure of Life-Cycle Earnings," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(2), pages 338-375, April.
    9. Dickens, Richard, 2000. "The Evolution of Individual Male Earnings in Great Britain: 1975-95," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(460), pages 27-49, January.
    10. Peter Gottschalk & Mary Joyce, 1998. "Cross-National Differences In The Rise In Earnings Inequality: Market And Institutional Factors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 489-502, November.
    11. Bergin, Adele, 2009. "Job Mobility in Ireland," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 40(1), pages 15-47.
    12. Lorenzo Cappellari, 2004. "The Dynamics and Inequality of Italian Men’s Earnings: Long-term Changes or Transitory Fluctuations?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2).
    13. Fabien Postel-Vinay & Hélène Turon, 2007. "The Public Pay Gap in Britain: Small Differences That (Don't?) Matter," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(523), pages 1460-1503, October.
    14. Easterly, William, 1999. "Life during growth : international evidence on quality of life and per capita income," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2110, The World Bank.
    15. Michael Baker & Gary Solon, 2003. "Earnings Dynamics and Inequality among Canadian Men, 1976-1992: Evidence from Longitudinal Income Tax Records," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 267-288, April.
    16. Easterly, William, 1999. "Life during Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 239-276, September.
    17. Barrett, Alan & FitzGerald, John & Nolan, Brian, 2002. "Earnings inequality, returns to education and immigration into Ireland," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(5), pages 665-680, November.
    18. Dollar, David & Kraay, Aart, 2002. "Growth Is Good for the Poor," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 195-225, September.
    19. Adriaan S. Kalwij & Rob Alessie, 2007. "Permanent and transitory wages of British men, 1975-2001: year, age and cohort effects," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(6), pages 1063-1093.
    20. repec:bla:econom:v:70:y:2003:i:278:p:353-374 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Daly, Mary C. & Valletta, Robert G., 2008. "Cross-national trends in earnings inequality and instability," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 215-219, May.
    22. Robert A. Moffitt & Peter Gottschalk, 2002. "Trends in the Transitory Variance of Earnings in the United States," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 68-73, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Denisa Maria Sologon & Cathal O'Donoghue, 2009. "Earnings Dynamics and Inequality in EU, 1994-2001," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 184, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Aedín Doris & Donal O’Neill & Olive Sweetman, 2013. "Identification of the covariance structure of earnings using the GMM estimator," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(3), pages 343-372, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aedín Doris & Donal O’Neill & Olive Sweetman, 2013. "Identification of the covariance structure of earnings using the GMM estimator," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(3), pages 343-372, September.
    2. Myck, Michal & Ochmann, Richard & Qari, Salmai, 2008. "Dynamics of Earnings and Hourly Wages in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 3751, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Higgins, Tim & Sinning, Mathias, 2013. "Modeling income dynamics for public policy design: An application to income contingent student loans," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 273-285.
    4. Denisa Maria Sologon & Cathal O'Donoghue, 2009. "Earnings Dynamics and Inequality in EU, 1994-2001," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 184, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    5. Stephen Jenkins & Peter Lambert, 2011. "Robert Moffitt and Peter Gottschalk’s 1995 paper ‘Trends in the covariance structure of earnings in the US: 1969–1987’," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 433-437, September.
    6. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Jenkins, Stephen P., 2014. "Earnings and labour market volatility in Britain, with a transatlantic comparison," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 201-211.
    7. Giesecke, Matthias & Bönke, Timm & Lüthen, Holger, 2011. "The Dynamics of Earnings in Germany: Evidence from Social Security Records," VfS Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis 48692, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. María Cervini-Plá & Xavier Ramos, 2012. "Long-Term Earnings Inequality, Earnings Instability and Temporary Employment in Spain: 1993–2000," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 50(4), pages 714-736, December.
    9. Sisi Zhang, 2010. "Recent Trends in Household Income Dynamics for the United States, Germany and Great Britain," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(2), pages 1154-1172.
    10. Kalwij, Adriaan & Alessie, Rob, 2003. "Permanent and Transitory Wage Inequality of British Men, 1975-2001: Year, Age and Cohort Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 686, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Robert Moffitt & Peter Gottschalk, 2008. "Trends in the Transitory Variance of Male Earnings in the U.S., 1970-2004," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 697, Boston College Department of Economics.
    12. Gustafsson, Johan & Holmberg, Johan, 2022. "Permanent and transitory earnings dynamics and lifetime income inequality in Sweden," Umeå Economic Studies 1005, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    13. Heshmati, Almas, 2004. "A Review of Decomposition of Income Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 1221, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Mishra, Aswini Kumar & Gupta, Akul & Bhardwaj, Vedant, 2022. "Permanent inequality versus earnings instability and transmission of income shocks to consumption expenditure in India," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 80-91.
    15. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Jenkins, Stephen P., 2014. "Earnings and labour market volatility in Britain, with a transatlantic comparison," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 201-211.
    16. Magnac, Thierry & Pistolesi, Nicolas & Roux, Sébastien, 2013. "Post schooling human capital investments and the life cycle variance of earnings," TSE Working Papers 13-380, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    17. Otto Kässi, 2014. "Earnings dynamics of men and women in Finland: permanent inequality versus earnings instability," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 451-477, March.
    18. Paul Bingley & Lorenzo Cappellari & Niels Westergård‐Nielsen, 2013. "Unemployment Insurance, Wage Dynamics and Inequality Over the Life Cycle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 341-372, May.
    19. Gustafsson, Johan & Holmberg, Johan, 2019. "Earning dynamics in Sweden: The recent evolution of permanent inequality and earnings volatility," Umeå Economic Studies 963, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    20. Sologon, Denisa Maria & O'Donoghue, Cathal, 2010. "Earnings Dynamics and Inequality among Men in Luxembourg, 1988-2004: Evidence from Administrative Data," IZA Discussion Papers 5014, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    permanent and transitory inequality;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3701. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.