IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6770.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income Inequality and Poverty

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Feldstein

Abstract

The first part of this paper argues that income inequality is not a problem in need of remedy. The common practice of interpreting a rise in the gini coefficient measure of inequality as a bad thing violates the Pareto principle and is equivalent to using a social welfare function that puts negative weight on increases in the income of high income individuals. The real distributional problem is not inequality but poverty. The paper considers three sources of poverty and asks what if anything might be done about each of them: unemployment; a low level of earning capacity; and individual choice.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Feldstein, 1998. "Income Inequality and Poverty," NBER Working Papers 6770, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6770
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6770.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romer, Christina D. & Romer, David H., 1994. "Monetary policy matters," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 75-88, August.
    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. Mary C. Daly & Daniel J. Wilson, 2006. "Keeping up with the Joneses and staying ahead of the Smiths: evidence from suicide data," Working Paper Series 2006-12, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    2. Deniz Sevinc & Edgar Mata Flores & Simon Collinson, 2020. "Are there inequality spillovers? Evidence through a modified inequality measure and European dynamics of inequality," Working Papers 545, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    3. Bo Yang & Minhaj Ali & Shujahat Haider Hashmi & Mohsin Shabir, 2020. "Income Inequality and CO 2 Emissions in Developing Countries: The Moderating Role of Financial Instability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-24, August.
    4. Branko Milanovic, 2004. "Why we all do care about inequality (but are loath to admit it)," HEW 0404001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Daniel Suryadarma & Rima Prama Artha & Asep Suryahadi & Sudarno Sumarto, . "A Reassessment of Inequality and Its Role in Poverty Reduction in Indonesia," Journal Article, Publications Department.
    6. Thomas A. Garrett, 2010. "U.S. income inequality: it’s not so bad," Inside the Vault, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Spring.
    7. Aftab Ahmad, 2020. "Poverty Terrorism Nexus: A Case Study Of Pakistan," Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 9(4), pages 162-172, December.
    8. David Brady, 2003. "The Poverty of Liberal Economics," LIS Working papers 343, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    9. Konstantinos D. Mavromatis, 2009. "Nonlinearities in the Real Exchange Rate and Monetary Policy: Interest Rate Rules Reconsidered," Working Papers 2009-4, Central Bank of Cyprus.
    10. J. G. Sri Ranjith, 2015. "The Effect of Microenterprises on Poverty: A Cross-county Analysis on US Urban Poverty," International Journal of Economics and Empirical Research (IJEER), The Economics and Social Development Organization (TESDO), vol. 3(3), pages 128-150, March.
    11. Hopkins, Jeffrey W. & Morehart, Mitchell J., 2000. "Distributional Analysis Of U.S. Farm Household Income," 2000 Annual Meeting, June 29-July 1, 2000, Vancouver, British Columbia 36517, Western Agricultural Economics Association.
    12. Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2005. "Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 963-1002.
    13. Abdelkrim Araar & Awoyemi Taiwo, 2006. "Poverty and Inequality Nexus: Illustrations with Nigerian Data," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 28(15), pages 1.
    14. M. Dolores Collado & Iñigo Iturbe Ormaetxe, 2008. "Public Transfers to the Poor: Is Europe really more Generous than the United States?," Working Papers. Serie AD 2008-05, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    15. Pervez Zammurad Janjua & Usman Ahmad Kamal, 2011. "The Role of Education and Income in Poverty Alleviation: A Cross-Country Analysis," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 16(1), pages 143-172, Jan-Jun.
    16. Alfonso Gambardella & David Ulph, 2002. "Technology, Entrepreneurship, And Inequality," LEM Papers Series 2002/06, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    17. Timothy Smeeding, 1999. "Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being, closing discussion: social policy implications, general commentary," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 5(Sep), pages 175-177.
    18. Mario Arturo Ruiz Estrada & Donghyun Park & Alam Khan & Muhammad Tahir, 2019. "Is terrorism, poverty, and refugees the dark side of globalization?," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1823-1835, July.

    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. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2010. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 763-801, June.
    2. Young, Andrew T. & Levy, Daniel, 2014. "Explicit Evidence of an Implicit Contract," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 804-832.
    3. Goodfriend, Marvin & King, Robert G., 2005. "The incredible Volcker disinflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 981-1015, July.
    4. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 1994. "What Ends Recessions?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1994, Volume 9, pages 13-80, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 1999. "Does Money Illusion Matter? An Experimental Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 184, CESifo.
    6. Mohamed Douch, 2010. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Monetary Policy and Financial Crisis," Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cankaya University, Economics and Administrative Sciences, vol. 1(7), pages 1-35, May.
    7. Balke, Nathan S. & Wynne, Mark A., 2007. "The relative price effects of monetary shocks," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 19-36, March.
    8. Mark A. Hooker, 1999. "Are oil shocks inflationary? Asymmetric and nonlinear specifications versus changes in regime," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-65, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Ball, Laurence, 1995. "Time-consistent policy and persistent changes in inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 329-350, November.
    10. Balázs Zélity, 2022. "Permanent income shocks and inflation," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 476-493.
    11. Owyang, Michael T. & Ramey, Garey, 2001. "Regime Switching and Monetary Policy Measurement," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt24q32688, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    12. Huh, Chan G. & Lansing, Kevin J., 2000. "Expectations, credibility, and disinflation in a small macroeconomic model," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 51-86.
    13. Jens R Clausen & Magda Kandil, 2009. "On Cyclicality in the Current and Financial Accounts: Evidence from Nine Industrial Countries," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 35(3), pages 338-366.
    14. Bordo, Michael D. & Haubrich, Joseph G., 2010. "Credit crises, money and contractions: An historical view," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 1-18, January.
    15. Florio, Anna, 2018. "Nominal anchors and the price puzzle," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 224-237.
    16. Bulíř, Aleš & Vlček, Jan, 2021. "Monetary transmission: Are emerging market and low-income countries different?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 95-108.
    17. Hassan, Rubina & Shahzad, Mirza Muhammad, 2011. "A macroeconometric framework for monetary policy evaluation: A case study of Pakistan," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1-2), pages 118-137, January.
    18. Ball, Laurence & Croushore, Dean, 2003. "Expectations and the Effects of Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(4), pages 473-484, August.
    19. Bennett T. McCallum, 2001. "Analysis of the Monetary Transmission Mechanism: Methodological Issues," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Deutsche Bundesbank (ed.), The Monetary Transmission Process, chapter 1, pages 11-59, Palgrave Macmillan.
    20. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2001. "Does Money Illusion Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1239-1262, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:6770. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.