Changing Patterns in the Distribution of Economic Welfare: An Economic Perspective

This 1997 book examines the income distributional experience of fifteen developed economies - representing a wide range of social and economic strategies - over the past two decades. Experts from each of the countries have carefully documented the pattern of distributional change in individual earnings and household income in their countries and analysed the driving forces behind these changes. Separate chapters are devoted to the experiences of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, West and former East Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The authors examine the effects on the inequality of household income of the development of individual earnings, unemployment, inflation, public sector transfers and taxes, and demographic changes.

Table of Contents:
1. What's behind the increase in inequality? An introduction Peter Gottschalk, Björn Gustafsson and Edward Palmer; 2. Policy changes and growing earnings inequality in seven industrialised countries Peter Gottschalk; 3. A survey of income inequality over the last twenty years - how does the UK compare? Karen Gardiner; 4. Economic adjustment and distributional change: income inequality and poverty in Australia in the 1980s Peter Saunders; 5. Unemployment, unemployment insurance and the distribution of income in Canada in the 1980s Lars Osberg, Sadettin Erksoy and Shelley Phipps; 6. Distribution of economic well-being in Japan: towards a more unequal society Toshiaki Tachibanaki and Tadashi Yagi; 7. Income inequality and poverty under transition from rapid inflation to stabilisation: Israel 1979–90 Lea Achdut; 8. Changes in inequality in Greece in the 1970s and the 1980s Panos Tsakloglou; 9. The development of income distribution in the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1970s and 1980s Richard Hauser and Irene Becker; 10. Income inequality and poverty in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s Tim Callan and Brian Nolan; 11. Income distribution in France: the mid-1980s turning point Pierre Concialdi; 12. The distribution of economic well-being in the Netherlands, its evolution in the 1980s and the role of demographic change Ruud Muffels and Jan Nelissen; 13. Changes in Swedish inequality: a study of equivalent income 1975–91 Björn Gustafsson and Edward E. Palmer; 14. Income inequality and poverty in Finland in the 1980s Markus Jäntti and Veli Matti Ritakallio; 15. Disparities in the economic well-being of Hungarian society from the late 1970s to the 1980s Ödön Élteto; 16. The emergence of the Labour market and earnings distribution: the case of the Czech Republic Jiri Vecernik.