The Space of Inequalities

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

About the Author

Prof. Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti is Professor of Economics at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Pavia, Italy and Director of the Human Development, Capability and Poverty International Research Centre at the Institute for Advanced Study in Pavia. Her main research interests are in the field of poverty and income inequality measurement; multidimensional approaches to poverty and well-being, capability and human development approach; fuzzy sets theory and fuzzy logic for well-being analysis; gender inequality, unpaid work, and female empowerment.

Notes

1. See Atkinson’s webpage (http://www.tony-atkinson.com) for a complete list of his books and extensive scientific production output.

2. What Hacker (2011) calls as “pre-distribution”, which basically requires market reforms able to guarantee a more equal distribution of economic power by encouraging long-term investments in innovation, entrepreneurship and workers’ empowerment as well as in quality public services able to generate skills and opportunities for young people.

3. Only a few pages in the book (pp. 39–42) are dedicated to gender and intergenerational inequality, and merely point out the fact that these are important concerns.

4. As Heckman (2001) outlines “skill begets skill” and investing in early education of good quality for disadvantaged children strongly affect achievements in many different spheres in adult life.

5. See the headline indicators of the European Union Sustainable Development Strategy on the Eurostat website http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/indicators/socioeconomic-development.

6. See Scervini, Peruzzi, and Chiappero-Martinetti (2016).

7. See Mourshed, Farrell, and Barton (2012), Mourshed et al. (2014) and the contributions to the policy debate on education and employment mismatch published on International Development Policy (https://poldev.revues.org/1802).

8. See Eurofound (2015).

9. Specifically, the set of proposals simulated by EUROMOD includes a more progressive income tax (Proposal 8), an earned income discount on personal income tax (Proposal 9), a child benefit scheme (Proposal 12), a national participation income (Proposal 13) or, alternatively, a renewed social insurance (Proposal 14).

10. Atkinson admits that some additional allowances might need to be paid for disability or other special (not specified) circumstances.

11. It should also be noticed that some proposals (including Proposals 6 and 12, for instance) are more easily understood in terms of equalizing opportunities rather than outcomes, somehow contradicting Atkinson’s initial assumption.