OBJECTIVES To examine the association between income inequality and the risk of mortality and readmission within 30 days of hospitalization. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study of Medicare beneficiaries in the United States. Hierarchical, logistic regression models were developed to estimate the association between income inequality (measured at the US state level) and a patient's risk of morta...

We use three conventional inequality indices—the Gini, the coefficient of variation of income, and the relative mean deviation of income—and the Atkinson index to examine the effect of income tax rates, the minimum wage, and all the major government welfare and transfer programs on the evolution of income inequality for rural and urban areas by state from 1981-1997. We find that these programs ...

This paper argues that consideration of world inequality should cause us to reexamine the key concepts underlying the welfare approach to the measurement of income inequality and the inter-relation between the measurement of inequality and the measurement of poverty. There are three reasons why we feel that a reexamination is necessary: (i) the extent of global income differences means that we ...

infrastructure plays an important role in the process of economic development. access to such infrastructures as safe piped drinking water, educational and health services, electrification and efficient transport system enhance human welfare. the main objective of this study is to determine the contribution of the main types of infrastructure investments to reduction of poverty and more balance...

Are Earnings Inequality and Mobility Overstated? The Impact of Non-Classical Measurement Error Measures of inequality and mobility based on self-reported earnings reflect attributes of both the joint distribution of earnings across time and the joint distribution of measurement error and earnings. While classical measurement error would increase measures of inequality and mobility there is subs...

Mental health is likely to be influenced by contextual variables that emerge only at the level of the group. We studied the effect of two such group-level variables, within-state income inequality and alcohol tax policy, on symptoms of current depression and alcohol dependence in a US national sample, controlling for state-level and individual characteristics. A cross-sectional US national prob...

Introduction Income inequality between persons in the world as a whole can be conceptualized as composed of two elements. First there is inequality within nations or countries. Second, there is inequality between nations or countries, being defined as inequality between the average incomes of these different nations. Some inequality measures, such as the variance of log‐income, or the generaliz...