Theories of poverty traps stand in sharp contrast to the view that anybody can make it through hard work and thrift. However, empirical detection of poverty traps is complicated by the lack of long panels, measurement error, and attrition. This paper shows how dynamic pseudo-panel methods can...

The degree of mobility in incomes is often seen as an important measure of the equality of opportunity in a society and of the flexibility and freedom of its labor market. But estimation of mobility using panel data is biased by the presence of measurement error and non-random attrition from the...

We argue that inter-country comparisons of income poverty based on poverty lines uniformly reflecting the costs of the basic requirements of human beings are superior to the existing money-metric approaches. In this exercise, we implement a uniform approach to poverty assessment based on basic...

The evolution of Gini coefficient for personal incomes in the USA between 1947 and 2005 is analyzed and modeled. There are several versions of personal income distribution (PID) provided by the US Census Bureau (US CB) for this period with various levels of resolution. Effectively, these PIDs...

This paper quantitatively demonstrates that modern estimates of income inequality based on the data reported by the IRS are not reliable. The principal problem of the estimates is highly volatile incomes of people in the low-end of income distribution. This volatility is likely related to...

We model the evolution of age-dependent personal income distribution and inequality as expressed by the Gini ratio. In our framework, inequality is an emergent property of a theoretical model we develop for the dynamics of individual incomes. The model relates the evolution of personal income to...

Often, religion, law and tradition co-evolve. Religious precepts shape social practice, which translates into law. Yet this harmony is not universal. The Sharia guarantees daughters their share in the family estate. Yet in Pakistan, this rule clashes with tradition. While the country was jointly...