Global Perspectives on Wealth and Distribution – serie

This book addresses the disparities that arise when measuring and modeling societal behavior and progress across the social sciences. It looks at why and how different disciplines and even researchers can use the same data and yet come to different conclusions about equality of opportunity, economic and social mobility, poverty and polarization, and conflict and segregation. Because societal behavior and progress exist only in the context of other key aspects, modeling becomes exponentially more complex as more of these aspects are factored into considerations. The content of this book transcends disciplinary boundaries, providing valuable information on measuring and modeling to economists, sociologists, and political scientists who are interested in data-based analysis of pressing social issues.

This book addresses the disparities that arise when measuring and modeling societal behavior and progress across the social sciences. It looks at why and how different disciplines and even researchers can use the same data and yet come to different conclusions about equality of opportunity, economic and social mobility, poverty and polarization, and conflict and segregation. Because societal behavior and progress exist only in the context of other key aspects, modeling becomes exponentially more complex as more of these aspects are factored into considerations. The content of this book transcends disciplinary boundaries, providing valuable information on measuring and modeling to economists, sociologists, and political scientists who are interested in data-based analysis of pressing social issues.

This book examines the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the degree of inequality in wellbeing (income and wealth, health, access to health care, employment, and education) in a number of different countries around the globe. The effect of socioeconomic inequality within a country on the outcome of the pandemic is also considered. This book studies the differential effects of Covid based on location, age, income, education, gender, race/ethnicity, and immigrant status. Special attention is devoted to indigenous populations and those who are institutionalized. The short- and long-term effects of public policy developed to deal with the pandemic’s fallout are studied, as are the effects of the pandemic on innovations in health care systems and likely extensions of public policy instituted during the pandemic to alleviate unemployment, poverty, and income inequality.

This book examines the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the degree of inequality in wellbeing (income and wealth, health, access to health care, employment, and education) in a number of different countries around the globe. The effect of socioeconomic inequality within a country on the outcome of the pandemic is also considered. This book studies the differential effects of Covid based on location, age, income, education, gender, race/ethnicity, and immigrant status. Special attention is devoted to indigenous populations and those who are institutionalized. The short- and long-term effects of public policy developed to deal with the pandemic’s fallout are studied, as are the effects of the pandemic on innovations in health care systems and likely extensions of public policy instituted during the pandemic to alleviate unemployment, poverty, and income inequality.

This book extends the literature on multidimensional poverty and economic deprivation by providing insights into the well-being of the US population. Written for policymakers, researchers, economists, and others studying poverty, this resource documents multidimensional deprivation in the US, examines variation in its incidence and intensity across demographic cohorts and geographic locales, and considers the corresponding implications for the American social contract.Multidimensional deprivation is chronicled using data extracted from the 2008–2023 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata surveys (ACS-PUMS). The extensive data, which includes information for nearly 48 million individuals, enable a thorough exploration of multidimensional deprivation in the US, serving as a valuable complement to the official income-based measures of poverty.

Product liability cases aimed at opioids have featured inflated damages and abatement costs, and responsibility for those costs has fallen on recognizable targets rather than true causal factors. Most opioid cases have ended in settlements, but such endings offer little in the way of closure to a problem that overwhelmed regulators and befuddled the entire medical profession. Courts were left to pick up the pieces, but the tools and data they were provided were woefully incomplete, with claimants incurring opioid-related costs but overstating future needs, and defendants unsure how to assess the impact of harms that they argued were too distant from their products—products that were used properly by the vast majority of users.  This book synthesizes the information available following these court cases and breaks down the story of the opioid crisis from an economic perspective, rooted in the concepts of externalities, regulation, and organizational economics. Chapters analyze what happened, where things went wrong, and how we can work to reconfigure infrastructure that enabled the opioid crisis. Applying logical frameworks to often-reactionary systems, the book provides insight into product liability, epidemiology, the economics of externalities, regulatory failure, and alternative forms of governance. The resulting book helps readers confront the hardest-hitting questions, including: How could a crisis like this occur in one of the most regulated sectors of the economy? Will the lessons learned from the litigation prevent a situation like this from happening again?

This Palgrave Pivot features original research studies of wage inequality in African countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. The contributors examine gender and racial wage differentials, as well as the effects of urbanization and globalization on inequality in wages and earnings. They also examine the extent to which human capital factors such as education and experience contribute to the significant wage differentials that exist in African countries.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive examination of multidimensional poverty for a wide variety of economies and societies, with a general focus on multidimensional poverty in developed countries, where poverty is often overlooked. Arguing that income- and consumption-based poverty measures cannot provide a full picture of the presence and extent of poverty, the contributors suggest new ways to structure assessment indexes. Complementing the discussion of new rubrics, a series of single-country and comparative examples from Europe and the United States examine variation in multidimensional poverty incidence and the extent of deprivation. This combination of methodology and application will appeal to academics, researchers, and policymakers alike.