acase@tulane.edu / This dissertation consists of three essays. The first is an analysis of tax credits that encourage charitable giving that estimates the causal effect of two of the costliest program: Arizona's Working Poor Tax Credit (WPTC) and the Endow Iowa program. Using synthetic control methods to construct counterfactuals, I estimate a 125 percent increase in contributions to community foundations in Iowa. In contrast, I find no evidence that the WPTC increased contributions to the targeted Arizona nonprofits. Evidence suggests that the growth in contribution levels in Iowa included increases in both the number of foundations and the level of contributions per foundation. The second essay examines the economic impact of the AmeriCorps program on the nonprofits. Fixed effects regressions show that nonprofits experience higher levels of contributions in years in which they sponsor AmeriCorps, whether State and National or VISTA. However, instrumental variables analysis suggests that AmeriCorps State and National have a crowding out effect on contributions. A ten percent increase in the number of AmeriCorps State and National is associated with a one percent decline in contributions. This level of crowd-out is similar to those estimated for other forms of government funding for the nonprofit sector. Estimates of the impact of VISTA rule out large levels of crowd-out. The third essay tests the sensitivity of cross-national inequality research to the choices about the underlying data. The main takeaways are as follows. First, estimates appear to be more sensitive to the choice of welfare concept than to the choice of inequality measure. Second, different international inequality databases frequently produce different results, even when the countries, the welfare concept, the inequality measure, and the time period are held constant. Third, while there is a rather large amount of evidence that estimated rates of convergence differ by region and by time, even this result is sensitive to the database that is used to perform the analysis. / 1 / Daniel Teles

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This thesis documents some stylised facts of what sustains unequal economic growth across Indian states over the period 1965-1997. It documents the dynamics of the convergence of incomes across the Indian states by tracking the evolution of the entire income distribution over 1965-97, instead of using standard regression and time series analyses. This approach, known in the literature as the distribution dynamics approach, reveals patterns of catch-up, which remain obscured in standard parametric approaches. The findings document a decline in disparities in the late sixties, with a subsequent increase in inequality in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. This is accompanied by the polarisation of the income distribution into two convergence clubs, one at around 125% of the national average, and at 50% of the national average. The latter half of the thesis tries to explain these stylised facts using both non-parametric and parametric techniques. The distribution dynamics reveal that the disparate distribution of infrastructure - both economic and social - strongly explains the formation of the lower income club. Fiscal deficits seem to partially explain club formation at the higher income levels. Standard panel regression analyses reveal that education, especially primary education, is associated with better growth performances. Macroeconomic stability is also associated with higher growth., while political instability and the lack of political governance is found to be negatively associated with growth too. Such findings have interesting implications for economic policy. The distribution dynamics reveal that an all-encompassing "global" policy for all states may not be appropriate - cohesive forces governing the formation of the two convergence clubs are different, hence, states belonging to different clubs require specific policies to address unequal growth performances. In terms of policy content, basic infrastructure, such as health, education, transport, and political governance require the most attention in the lower income states, while for higher income states, macroeconomic stability and political governance, seem to be the more important.

Thesis advisor: Paul Cichello / As inequality continues to grow, scholars remain conflicted on solutions to diminish the gaps in earnings. Mexico is an upper-middle income country, however it is also among the high inequality countries. This study uses data from the Mexican Intercensal Survey to analyze the relationship of the dispersion of education on the amount of earnings inequality. Regions with higher educational inequality and educational attainment tend to have higher earnings inequality. The research was expanded to explore how inequality has changed over the course of the 21st century. The results concluded that the mean educational attainment and average earnings increased as the GINI and EGINI coefficients notably decreased over the fifteen year timespan. From a policy perspective, this finding sets the tone for a bottom-up approach. While not hindering the attainment of the top, ideal policy would incentivize opportunity for bottom achievers. Furthermore, the results clearly contradicted Kuznets’ hypothesis with a U-shaped distribution between earnings and inequality. This paper explores alternative development theories as well as policy action focusing on education to reduce inequality. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

Social mobility has been extensively documented based on two-generational associations. Whereas a few studies suggest that the approach related to social inequalities should be open to multigenerational associations, the topic of social mobility over multiple generations is still at its blooming stage. Very little is known about multigenerational effects on education in Britain and about empirical evidence of the mechanisms that underlie multigenerational effects. Drawing on the British Household Panel Survey and the UK Longitudinal Household Study, this thesis examines social mobility over three generations in Britain. The central aims of the thesis are to explore direct grandparental effects on grandchildren's educational and class attainments independent of parental influences. In particular, it focuses on mechanisms through which grandparental effects operate. The thesis finds that grandparental class is significantly associated with grandchildren's educational achievement, despite parental class, parental education, and parental wealth being taken into account. Regarding the mechanisms, the evidence suggests first that the impacts of grandparental class on education remain even though grandparents have passed away at the time of the survey, and second that the impacts disappear only when grandparents have only infrequent contact with the family. Furthermore, I find that grandparental effects are significantly stronger on grandchildren originating from advantaged parents than on those from disadvantaged parents, indicating the strong persistence of inequalities at the top of social stratification. The research also highlights significant, albeit modest, effects of grandparental class on grandchildren's class attainment over and above parental influences. For grandsons, maternal grandparental class still matters even after grandsons' education has been controlled for. In particular, self-employed grandparents have a strong impact on grandsons' likelihood of engagement in self-employment, a pattern that holds true even when parents are not self-employed. For granddaughters, neither paternal nor maternal grandparental class is found to have a direct substantial impact on granddaughters' class after granddaughters' education has been controlled for. The thesis suggests that the conventional social mobility approach based on parentchild associations may overestimate the effects of parental characteristics and underestimate the effects of family origins. Family advantages run deep; they are maintained over generations in Britain.

The issue of income equality has become of great concern on a global scale. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, economists and other socioeconomic analysts have observed the state of the income and wealth gap between the top ten percent rich and the lower forty percent poor of populations, and its far-reaching impact on the lives of ordinary people. Income inequality has become a global challenge and the effects are felt in both developed and developing countries. The socioeconomic disparity between the rich and poor is pronounced in developing countries, and recent trends of growing inequality are being observed in developed countries. This research examines the effect of education on income inequality and GDP per capita, using a panel dataset of 18 selected sub-Saharan countries for the period from 1994 to 2015. The panel models are estimated, using the fixed effects, random effects and generalised methods of moments estimation techniques. The results show that the relationship of education and its impact on income inequality is dependent on the level of education being assessed. High resource input in tertiary education increases income inequality, while high resource input in lower educational levels reduces income inequality. Overall, increases in government expenditure on education lead to increase in inequality and a fall in GDP per capita. These results show possible inefficiencies in the allocation of educational resources in sub-Saharan countries during the period of investigation. Government spending on education does not reduce inequality or boost income unless it is done efficiently. To reduce income inequality and increase average income, educational resources must be efficiently allocated with priority given to the educational levels of the highest proportions of the population.

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China has been experiencing a great transition from a socialist collective economy to a market economy since 1978. Before the transition started, the Communist Party had established a socialist collective system with very low levels of income and wealth inequality. With the deepening of the rural reform and the development of rural industry, a large number of people were lifted out of poverty. However, as the people's living standards are rising, disparities in income and wealth are also being accentuated. This thesis's main purpose is to study the extent and determinants of income and wealth inequality in rural China. Based on a sample survey data from Anhui and Sichuan provinces, the thesis answers the following five questions: 1. How much income and wealth inequality is there in rural China in 1994-1995? 2. How has inequality in rural China changed since the reform of 1978? 3. How do the components of income and wealth in China affect the income and wealth distributions? 4. What social and economic factors are most responsible for influencing income and wealth in rural China? 5. How much of the inequality in income and wealth can be accounted for by the factors that predict income and wealth? The main findings of the study are, first, rural income inequality was low in the two provinces in 1994-1995 and wealth inequality was higher than income inequality. Second, in the industrialized Sichuan province, nonagricultural income made a big contribution to income inequality, while in the agricultural Anhui province, agricultural income played an important role in increasing income inequality. Third, education, good land, sufficient labor, and better communication resources are positively related to income and wealth. / Master of Science