The correlates of declining income inequality among emerging and developing economies during the 2000s

Anderson, Edward (2022) The correlates of declining income inequality among emerging and developing economies during the 2000s. World Development, 152. ISSN 0305-750X

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Abstract

Since the early 2000s, trends in income inequality in emerging and developing economies have undergone a noticeable shift. While inequality tended to increase during the 1980s and 1990s, it has tended to fall since the early 2000s. In this paper we analyse the correlates of declining income inequality among emerging and developing economies during the 2000s. We estimate country-specific trends in market and disposable income inequality for a large sample of over 100 countries, and then use econometric analysis to examine the correlates of those trends. We find 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. We also find a role for increases in educational attainments, tax revenues and government social spending, and trade liberalisation, but only in Latin America. 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.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	inequality,growth,structural change,commodity prices,fiscal policy,sdg 2 - zero hunger,sdg 10 - reduced inequalities ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/zero_hunger
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	14 Jan 2022 10:30
Last Modified:	24 Dec 2023 01:38
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/83027
DOI:	10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105785

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