The paper analyzes the relation between growth and income inequality in the US during the post-war years (1953–2008). We show that the income of the top income groups is more sensitive to growth, defined broadly as current growth and changes in expectations of future growth, compared to the income of the lower income groups. We provide evidence that this increased sensitivity arises for two rea...

In the United States, highly religious people tend to live longer, have fewer health and mental problems, steal less, volunteer more time, and give away more money than others. Even when other relevant factors are controlled for statistically, these differences persist. Moreover, in many cases the religiosity of the community influences these factors as much as the religiosity of individuals. T...

The analysis that follows tests the regression model of Income Inequality by examining the relation among Gini coefficient, GDP growth rate, saving rate and so on within the same country. The purpose of this study is to test out the relation between income inequality and economic growth rate, and the result suggests that income inequality has a negative impact on economic growth rate in the cas...

Behavioural economics highlights the role of social preferences in economic decisions. Further, populations are heterogeneous; suggesting that group composition may impact the ability to sustain voluntary public goods contributions. This parallels research in public economics where fractionalization negatively impacts provision. We conduct agent-based simulations of contributions in a public go...

Social capital is increasingly used in the field of community development and the social economy. This article describes some of the results to emerge from a three-year research project (CONSCISE Project), which looked at the contribution social capital can make to the social economy within local economic development. Following the definition of social capital, the article examines how it can b...

All of the recent empirical work on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth has used inequality data that are not consistently measured. This paper argues that this is inappropriate and shows that the significant negative correlation often found between income inequality and growth across countries is not robust when income inequality is measured in a consistent manner. H...

Many empirical studies have shown that economic growth generally leads to a drop in poverty. These studies have also pointed out that a given growth rate is compatible with a large range of outcomes in terms of poverty reduction. This means that growth is more pro-poor in certain cases than in others. Using complete and partial poverty orderings, this paper suggests a measure which captures the...