The aim of this paper is to estimate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the wage polarization in Italy, combining individual characteristics with their task content in terms of physical proximity within the workplace. We use an innovative dataset which combines data from two sample surveys, the Italian Labor Force Survey and Italian Survey of Professions, which provides information on nature and content of the tasks. First, by employing a non-parametric method (the Relative Distribution) we detect a general increasing wage polarization in the sub-period 2020–2019, driven by lowest deciles, after a reduction in the previous one (2019–10). Different groups have been also isolated. Workers with low education, high proximity to customers job, such as the immigrant, younger and female ones are the categories that more suffered the general downgrading of the Italian wages happened during the COVID-19 crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed individuals to various risks, including job loss, income reduction, deteriorating well-being, and severe health complications and death. In Brazil and the U.S., as well as in other countries, the initial response to the pandemic was marked by governmental underestimation, leading to inadequate public health measures to curb the spread of the virus. Although progressively mitigated, this approach played a crucial role in the impacts on local populations. Therefore, the principal aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 and, indirectly, of the policies adopted by the U.S. and the Brazilian governments to prevent pandemic diffusion on income distribution. Utilizing available microdata and employing novel econometric methods (RIF-regression for inequality measures) this study shows that growth in COVID-19 prevalence significantly exacerbates economic disparities. Furthermore, the impact of COVID-19 on inequality has increased over time, suggesting that this negative impact has been intensifying. In the U.S., results indicate that working from home, the inability to work, and barriers to job-seeking significantly increase inequalities. Although further data are necessary to validate the hypothesis, this preliminary evidence suggests that the pandemic has significantly contributed to increased inequality in these two countries already characterized by increasing polarization and significant social disparities.

Are differences in per capita income between countries really the main cause of migratory flows? Mainstream economic thinking would give an affirmative answer. In the light of the heterodox literature, in this article, the authors critically evaluate this view and then they conduct an empirical test (applying panel and dynamic panel models) on data relating to the stocks of migrants on 232 countries from 1990 to 2019, trying to explain migration trends based on social-political, cultural, demographic and economic variables (obtained by integrating 4 official datasets). The results reveal a non-unique influence of differences in per capita income on migratory flows: up to a certain threshold (around $27,000) migration appears to be directly related to per capita GDP of migrants' country of origin. Furthermore, the pre-existing stock of migrants in the country of destination takes on an important role, in line with the findings of the literature on migratory chains. These empirical findings could contribute to improve migration policies.

In Africa, evidence on the interactions among poverty, growth, and income distribution presents a puzzle: While growth has been robust in recent decades, the growth elasticity of poverty has remained low. This suggests that inequality has dampened the pro-poor effects of growth. However, when using standard inequality measures, there is only scattered evidence of high and growing inequality in Africa outside the extremely unequal southern cone. This paper argues that inequality mismeasurement could be the main culprit responsible for this paradox: consumption-based measures miss important information at the top end of the consumption distribution, leading to underestimation of inequality. This paper proposes distinct solutions, arguing that by reevaluating the importance of distributional issues in Africa, the need becomes apparent for refreshing the research agenda on African development in such a way that the interaction between poverty and inequality becomes a core concern.

Nuestro estudio es el primer análisis que muestra la tendencia de la distribución del bienestar en Cuba, en el periodo de las reformas económicas y sociales impulsadas por el presidente Raúl Castro. Los análisis revelan que el bienestar, premisa del desarrollo humano y medido como acceso a bienes y servicios fundamentales y no monetarios, ha aumentado, a pesar de la crisis económica; en tanto que las desigualdades en el acceso al bienestar han aumentado poco en el periodo 2006-2011 y han disminuido en el periodo siguiente, para llegar en 2014 a un nivel ligeramente inferior al de 2006.

This study is the first assessment of the well-being distribution in Cuba during the period of economic and social reforms launched by the president Raul Castro. Our results show that the level of well-being, measured as the access to fundamental goods and services and non-monetary assets, raised despite the economic crisis over the period 2006-2014. Inequality in the distribution of well-being slightly increased until 2011, but decreased in the subsequent period 2011-2014, for reaching in 2014 a level just below that observed in 2006.

Thank you very much for asking us to respond to this very interesting paper and give the opportunity to shed additional light on a debate that we find extremely relevant for Africa. We take Partridge's (2022) criticism as an opportunity to reflect not only on the methodology we suggest but also on the broad message we want to convey. The paper questions the validity of our results (Clementi et al., 2018, 2019) by basically attempting to confute two claims made in our work. Claim 1 states that our work can account for 'distributional changes that went undetected by standard inequality measures', and Claim 2 states that 'there was an increase in polarization caused by a 'hollowing out' of the middle and a 'concentration' in the lowest and highest deciles of the distribution'. The author attempts to disprove both claims, concluding that we misinterpreted our results. We plan to articulate our answer by discussing the two claims and explaining the methodological assumptions at the ground of our choices.

This paper uses data from three Moroccan household surveys between 2001 to 2013 to address issues related to the so-called "Arab inequality puzzle". Welfare inequalities are low and declining in Arab countries and exist against a growing sense of dissatisfaction and frustration. The paper hypothesizes that welfare inequality plays a role in explanation, if seen through the lens of absolute measures and notably absolute polarization. The paper argues that the relatively worsened perception of their welfare among poor, vulnerable, and lower middle-class Moroccan households mirrors the ongoing hollowing out of the welfare distribution's middle and its growing polarization. The results of a multi-logit regression indicate that polarization is significantly and asymmetrically correlated to perception: the poorer are the households, the more polarization links negatively to their perceived welfare; and the richer are the households, the more polarization will positively correlate with their perception.

In Crisis, Inequalities and Poverty, Schettino and Clementi provide an empirical and theoretical analysis of the economic breakdown that has characterised the last two decades of capitalist development – from the Lehman collapse to the Covid-19 pandemic – with a particular focus on the impact on poverty and inequality. The book provides a materialist account of the current global crisis of overproduction and looks at the link between capitalist crisis and systemic inequity, making the case through detailed quantification that the principal engine of these structural phenomena is in fact the general law of accumulation of the capitalist mode of production.

Since the 1990s, and until the beginning of the second decade of the XXIth century, record economic growth in the PRC has been inclusive (as virtually all social groups experienced sizeable well-being improvements in an absolute terms). Yet, it has been accompanied by an increase in both income inequalities and polarization. To jointly explore these phenomena, we apply the Relative Distribution tool on different datasets. This technique allows to statistically isolate and analyze separately the pure growth and the pure distributional components, or effects, of the overall societal income evolution process. Our main result shows a hollowing out of the mid-range deciles -i..e, the (national) middle class , understood by definition as the central ones of a country's income distribution function -with a corresponding fattening of the highest and lowest ones. Trends in "pure distribution" (i.e., the shape effect) show the emergence of a typical polarization profile. This key finding does not contradict the stylized fact that such a (negative) "pure distributional" trend has been "countered" by impressive GDP growth. The latter has led an ever-increasing and now ample share of China's population to join the ranks of the global middle class - a popular declination of the middle class concept with its own merits, yet totally distinct to the national one mentioned above.(1) We need to take both growth effects and shape effects over time into consideration for a proper political economic assessment of Chinese economic performance. As growth slows, unless countervailing policies are undertaken, polarization might reveal itself more sharply, increasing the risk of social conflicts. To avoid such an unwelcome outcome, focused anti-polarization actions are warranted, along with policies aiming at achieving a more egalitarian growth pattern. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

With increasing income inequality in the US over the last few decades, what has happened to the middle class? The aggregate inequality indexes don't answer this question. We employ Relative Distribution tools and use the ASEC-CPS dataset in order to provide an analysis of the US income distribution and trace the impact of inequality on the middle class. We observe confirming the Pew study of 2016a typical polarization profile has emerged during 1998-2018 with a shift of many middle class families towards the lower end of income distribution. The hypothesis of the hollowing out of the middle class in the US starting with the age of Reaganomics is also confirmed. We also find some preliminary evidence for intersectionality, i.e. race, class and gender working together in a vicious cycle for the disadvantaged. Policies to counteract these tendencies must be anti-polarization policies along with those of relatively more egalitarian growth. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.