En liberal om inkomstfördelning, 4

"Jämlikhet låter bra, men ungdomsarbetslöshet, stagnation och begränsade möjligheter för människor att söka sin egen lycka är ett för högt pris att betala för den."

Maria Eriksson, "Vad kostar jämlikheten?", SvD ledare 8 mars 2010

kausalitet 1: jämlikhet --> högre ungdomsarbetslöshet
kausalitet 2: jämlikhet --> stagnation
kausalitet 3: jämlikhet --> "begränsade möjligheter för människor att söka sin egen lycka"

1. om ungdomsarbetslöshet.

- nästa figur med ration ungdomsarbetslöshet - arbetslöshet överlag istället, för att fånga de effekter som inkomstfördelning eventuellt har på distributionen av arbetslösheten mellan grupper:


Källa ungdomsarbetslöshet: Eurostat, Europe in Figures: Eurostat Yearbook 2009, tabell 7.7, s 283; ration beräknad helt enkelt som ungdomsarbetslöshetsgraden/totala arbetslöshetsgraden
Källa gini: OECD Growing unequal

Men vad med de ungdomar som står utanför helt, som varken arbetar eller studerar?

Källa: gini från SWIID (Growing unequal som jag använde ovan har bara en årpunkt)
Källa: inaktivitet - detta är för unga kvinnor, konstigt nog anger excel-arket bara för könen separat, men mönstret är rätt likt mellan kvinnor och män - från OECD Society at a Glance 2008.

Egentligen kanske man borde använda brutto-gini om det finns. Och det finns också invändningar mot SWIID.

2. om tillväxten, se "En liberal om inkomstfördelning, 3"


3. om "begränsade möjligheter för människor att söka sin egen lycka", se:
Jfr, 1:

"This paper breaks new ground by providing comparable estimates of intergenerational wage and education persistence across 14 European OECD countries based on a new micro data from Eurostat. A further novelty is that it examines the potential role of public policies and labour and product market institutions in explaining observed differences in intergenerational wage mobility across countries. The empirical estimates show that intergenerational wage persistence is relatively high in southern European countries, as well as in the United Kingdom. Likewise, intergenerational persistence in education is relatively high both in southern European countries and in Luxembourg and Ireland. By contrast, both persistence in wages and education tends to be lower in Nordic countries. In addition, empirical results show that education is one important driver of intergenerational wage persistence across European countries. There is a positive crosscountry correlation between intergenerational wage mobility and redistributive policies, as well as a positive correlation between wage-setting institutions that compress the wage distribution and mobility."

Orsetta Causa, Sophie Dantan & Åsa Johansson, "Intergenerational social mobility in European OECD countries", (pdf) OECD Economics Department Working Paper no 709, 2009

Jfr, 2:

"The United States is the most unequal affluent country. It has the highest level of
earnings inequality among employed individuals and the highest level of posttaxposttransfer income inequality among households (Kenworthy 2004, 2008;
Pontusson 2005; Brandolini and Smeeding 2006; Burniaux, Padrini, and Brandt
2006). But these conclusions are based on single-year snapshots of the population.
Many believe that the United States also has more mobility of earnings and income than other countries - that is, individuals move up and down in the distribution with greater frequency and to a greater extent. If this is true, inequality of long-run ("permanent") earnings and income in the United States may be comparable to or perhaps even less than in other countries. A number of researchers have examined the degree to which multiple-year inequality differs from single-year inequality (Burkhauser and Poupore 1997; Jarvis and Jenkins 1998; Buchinsky and Hunt 1999; Gittleman and Joyce 1999; Goodin et al. 1999; Cantó 2000; Aaberge et al. 2002; Gangl 2005). The finding typically has been that inequality measured using average income over a five- or ten-year period is 10% to 30% less than when measured for a single year. But do countries differ in the degree to which mobility over time reduces
inequality? In recent years a handful of studies have examined comparative earnings
and/or income inequality over multi-year periods. An OECD (1996) study
compared earnings inequality in the United States and seven European countries
during a five-year period from 1986 to 1991. Burkhauser and Poupore (1997)
compared income inequality in the United States and Germany during the 1980s.
Aaberge et al. (2002) examined earnings and income inequality in the United
States, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden over a ten-year period from 1980 to 1990.
Schluter (1998) examined income inequality in the United States, Germany, and
the United Kingdom during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Goodin et al. (1999)
compared income inequality in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands
during a ten-year period from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Gangl (2005) examined income inequality in the United States and eleven European countries
over a six-year period in the mid-to-late 1990s. Each of these studies found little
or no alteration of the country rank-ordering when switching from a single-year
measure of inequality to a multi-year measure. And all found that, as when
measured in single years, inequality measured over multiple years tends to be
comparatively high in the United States.
/.../
As we suggested earlier, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that there is greater
relative intragenerational mobility of earnings and income in the United States
than in Germany or Sweden. If the hypothesis was correct, the degree of inequality
in the United States would not be so high relative to the other two countries
when we shift from a measure of inequality based on earnings or incomes aggregated
over a single year to a measure aggregated over many years. However, our
data suggest that this is not the case — or at least that it was not the case in the
1980s and 1990s. High U.S. inequality was not offset by greater mobility."

Markus Gangl, Joakim Palme, and Lane Kenworthy, "Is High Inequality Offset by Mobility?", (pdf) working paper, 2008

Jfr, 3:

"Den här rapporten handlar om social rörlighet. Med detta avses i vilken utsträckning ekonomiska fördelar ärvs mellan generationer. De nordiska länderna är socialt rörligare än andra utvecklade länder. Rörligheten är lägst i USA, men endast något högre i länder som Storbritannien, Italien och Frankrike. Därmed är livschanserna bättre fördelade i Sverige. Vi kan i högre utsträckning än andra frigöra oss från vår historia och bli den vi vill bli. Den amerikanska drömmen är en realitet i de nordiska länderna, men i praktiken en mardröm på andra sidan atlanten.
Orsakerna till den höga (låga) sociala rörligheten i Norden (USA) handlar i grund och botten om samhällets institutionella struktur – om i vilken utsträckning samhället tillåts kompensera för skillnader i uppväxtvillkor och familjeförhållanden, om utbildningssystemets struktur, om avkastningen på utbildning, om lönespridningen, om inkomstskillnaderna, om förekomsten av arbeten med låga löner, om graden av omfördelning."

Daniel Lind, "Hur långt från trädet faller äpplet?", Arbetarrörelsens ekonomiska råd, Låginkomstutredningen rapport 3, år 2009

Jfr, 4:

"Social rörlighet är i allmänhet större i länder med lägre ojämlikhet i fråga om inkomster och vice versa . Detta innebär i praktiken att om man åstadkommer större jämlikhet i fråga om chanser, uppnås samtidigt socialt rättvisare resultat."

OECD, "Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries", (svensk sammanfattning, pdf), 2009

Jfr, 5: Economist om inkomstfördelning och "möjligheter för människor att söka sin egen lycka" i USA, 17 april:

"The most highly skilled, meanwhile, have stuffed their pockets happily. Between 1970 and 2008 the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, grew from 0.39 to 0.47. In mid-2008 the typical family’s income was lower than it had been in 2000. The richest 10% earned nearly half of all income, surpassing even their share in 1928, the year before the Great Crash.

Compared with people in other rich countries, Americans tend to accept relatively high levels of income inequality because they believe they may move up over time. The evidence is that America does offer opportunity; but not nearly as much as its citizens believe.

Parental income is a better predictor of a child’s future in America than in much of Europe, implying that social mobility is less powerful. Different groups of Americans have different levels of opportunity. Those born to the middle class have about an equal chance of moving up or down the income ladder, according to the Economic Mobility Project. But those born to black middle-class families are much more likely than their white counterparts to fall in rank. The children of the rich and poor, meanwhile, are less mobile than the middle class’s. More than 40% of those Americans born in the bottom quintile remain stuck there as adults. /.../

How rising inequality affects social mobility is still unclear. Those born since inequality started to rise sharply are only just now becoming adults. However there are some troubling signs according to two papers to be presented at the Tobin Project, an alliance of scholars, this month. Christopher Jencks of Harvard University finds that income inequality has been accompanied by a widening gap in college attendance. Ms Sawhill argues that a rising correlation between income levels, likelihood of marriage and level of education will make society more stagnant. "

Economist, "Upper bound", 17 april 2010 (min fetning)

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del 1: Gert Gelotte/GP
del 2: DN:s ledarsida
del 3: Magnus Andersson/CUF

Bloggserien kanske började 17 feb med ett inlägg om "Lägre skatt på jobb = mer sysselsättning?", utifrån ännu en usel liberal ledarartikel (på GP).

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EDIT
Karin Nilsson, "Ungdomars utanförskap - allas och ingens ansvar", Arbetsmarknaden 3 september 2010