Thesis--Lund. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Bibliography: p. 155-157.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Omer R. Galle. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-34).

South Africa is acknowledged as having the highest Gini coefficient in the world. The Gini coefficient is a measure of income inequality in a country. The eradication of all forms of inequality was probably the most important aspiration for people pre-democracy. After two decades of democracy, not only has the eradication of inequality not materialised, but inequality has worsened. The aim of the research is threefold. Firstly, to understand the origins and the ensuing reasons for inequality as it is experienced in South Africa in 2013 and secondly, to investigate what the effects of this inequality are on the lives of South Africans, socially, politically and economically. Lastly, the research aims to find what, if anything, South Africans can do to address the issue, in order to determine if the aspiration is indeed attainable. Qualitative exploratory research was conducted by interviewing 16 prominent South Africans with the requisite knowledge of the topic and experience in their respective fields. Semi-structured, in-depth face-to-face interviews were performed. Content and theme analysis were carried out on the transcripts, followed by the recording of the responses in logically ordered tables. The literature informed the interpretation of the results in the tables. The reasons for and causes of South Africa’s high Gini coefficient were identified, with the apartheid legacy and the present government’s governance style as the two greatest contributors. The effects of the high inequality in the South African context were considered far more detrimental to society, than to the politics and the economy of the country. The research yielded a number of actions that could be considered to reduce inequality, thereby improving the Gini coefficient. The two most important proposals were addressing the current poor education system and finding a solution for unemployment. / Dissertation (MBA)--Gordon Institute of Business Science, 2013 / mn2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

This study was about the reaction of disadvantaged groups and persons to inequality and deprivation. Set in Badia, a low income community in Lagos, Nigeria, it investigates the main effects of community members’ attributions of causes of poverty in motivating or impeding their reaction to inequality. Relative Deprivation (RD) theory proposed that dissatisfaction with social outcomes depend on subjective feelings rather than objective criteria. However scholars found empirical difficulties in predicting collective action on the basis of RD. Resource Mobilization proponents argued on the contrary that feelings are not salient within the framework of action. The infusion of Social Identity Theory (SIT) into RD research however resolved the paradox of action with SIT’s argument that action was contingent upon the perception of permeability and legitimacy of inter-group structures. However, despite successes of SIT, scholars found that it was unable to predict the type of actions group members will take in response to injustice and the nature of possible actions. Propositions of RD and SIT were therefore suitable for integration into the proposition of Taylor & McKirnan’s (1984) Five Stage Model (FSM) of inter-group relations that reactions to RD feelings were predicated upon the dynamics of the social philosophy guiding stratification. Using an integrated RD, SIT and FSM framework, this study shows how disadvantaged group members’ responses to deprivation proceeded as predicted by the FSM from mutual acceptance to collective action mediated by their perception of causes of poverty. This complements the trend in the literature on reaction to inequality and it's almost ii exclusive focus on instrumental and affective concerns while neglecting the role of consensually shared beliefs in motivating or impeding action and willingness to act in response to injustice. The study hypothesized that the pattern of causal attributions of poverty of respondents will shape their ‘predisposition to act’ and the type of action they would engage in. The main hypothesis of the study therefore was that poverty attribution mediates the relationship between ‘feelings of injustice’ and ‘reaction to inequality’. For instance where respondents attribute poverty to individual or fatalistic factors they will adopt individual action whereas where attributions are structural, responses will be collective, where feelings of injustice were present. A survey was conducted using a five-level Likert scale to decipher respondents’ perceptions of feelings of injustice, their causal attribution of poverty, their levels of willingness to embark on collective action and actions taken in the preceding year. In the first stage of analysis, responses (n = 383) were reduced using Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to determine how questionnaire items contributed to variables under consideration. Subsequently, variables extracted were correlated and regressed. While bivariate correlation was used to test simple relationships between variables, a stepwise hierarchical regression analysis was used to decipher how sub-dimensions of poverty attribution mediate the relationship between respondents’ feelings of injustice and their willingness to embark on collective action entering variables in succession into the regression equation. Furthermore, a 1 x 3 x 5 Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was used to test the mediation effects of poverty attribution sub-dimensions on the relationship between injustice feelings and actions. The results showed iii that structural attribution was the preferred explanation for poverty among Badia residents, as this explanation was preferred by a majority of the respondents. It was also shown that while 96.9% of respondents used more than one causal attribution, a majority of structural attributors adopted fatalistic attribution as second choice of explanation for poverty. On the basis of the above, and in line with previous studies (Mann, 1970; Bobo, 1991), it was deduced that the possibility for radical action would be diminished as a result of this ‘dual/split consciousness’. The result further confirmed as hypothesized, that fatalistic attribution had a negative correlation with willingness to embark on collective action as respondents in the fatalistic condition were not willing to embark on collective action. However, respondents in the structural conditions were more willing to engage in collective action. While attributions predicted willingness to embark on collective action, MANCOVA showed that action proceeded in a continuum as predicted by the FSM. For example, while the introduction of fatalistic and individual attribution to the equation hypothesizing the relationship between injustice feelings and action showed that resultant actions were predominantly individual normative, post-hoc inclusion of the structural dimension to the equation showed an addition variance to the equation for collective action. This indicated that structural attributions enhance collective normative action. However, consistent with most studies in the literature, the results did not predict collective non-normative action1. Results indicated low adherence of subject to items eliciting collective action suggesting that past studies which reported high preference of collective action by disadvantaged groups may have been influenced by ‘social desirability effects’, given Topf’s (1995) assertion that what people say they will do is often not what they do but what they perceive as right in the particular situation. 1 The only notable exception is Boen & Vanbeselaere (1998) 2 A full discussion of lay explanations of poverty is reserved for chapter 4 of this thesis. iv The study however proposed on the basis of the salience of structural attributions that poverty attributions may become useful for Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) interested in fostering social change. However, while the study showed that attribution influences willingness to embark on action it does not show how attribution becomes salient in group membership. Thus there is a need for future studies to investigate how attribution affects group identification. Similarly, given the dearth of studies of the attribution of the ‘actual poor’ of poverty, it is necessary for future studies to test the validity of the result from the present study indicating stronger adherence to fatalistic than individualistic attributions of poverty among the disadvantaged. While many past studies of attribution and those of reaction to injustice have been on samples of middle-class adults in developed countries, or artificially created deprived groups, the present study being of the ‘real life’ poor in a Third World setting, provides evidence of ‘real world’ actions and attributions of people experiencing poverty.

The existing inequality indexes in the economics literature (including the more sophisticated indexes of Muellbauer (1974) and Jorgenson-Slesnick (1984)), are found to be insensitive to relative price changes or are unjustifiable in terms of social evaluation ethics or both. The present research fills this gap in the literature by proposing a new index, named the Individual Equivalent Income (IEI) index. A household indirect utility function is hypothesized which incorporates certain attribute parameters in the form of equivalence scales. These attributes are demographic and environmental characteristics specific to a given household. This indirect utility function gives a number which represents the utility of each member of the household. A particular level of interpersonal comparison of utilities is assumed which gives rise to an exact individual utility indicator named equivalent income. A distribution of these equivalent incomes forms the basis of a price-sensitive relative inequality index. This index can be implemented in the Canadian context. Preferences are assumed to be nonhomothetic translog and demand data are derived from cross-section surveys and time-series aggregates. Based on demand data, the translog equivalent income function can be estimated and equivalent incomes imputed to all individuals in society. An Atkinson index of equivalent incomes is then computed to indicate the actual degree of inequality in Canada. The new IEI index is compared with other indexes based on a common data set. The main findings are: conventional indexes give bad estimates of the true extent of inequality and the IEI index, while providing a more accurate estimate, indicates distributive price impact in a predictable manner, i.e., food price inflation aggravates while transportation price inflation ameliorates the inequality problem. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the existing pattern and changing trend of the distribution of wealth in today's Canada. In doing so I explore both theoretical accounts and empirical evidence. First, the theoretical perspectives of both classical (Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) and contemporary (Blumberg, Westergaard and Resler, Porter, and Clement) social thinkers were discussed. The objective of this review was to describe the sociological interpretations and explanations of the distribution of wealth. Second, existing evidence was reviewed and new data was gathered on the wealth distribution in Canada. The existing data came from Osberg, Hunter, Vaillancourt, Rashid, and Oja. New data concerning such issues as welfare state, income disparity, and important wealth components was examined to augment the previously existing data. The Canadian wealth distribution proved to be unequal and to have become slightly more unequal over time. The concluding chapter briefly reviews possible explanations for this set of findings. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

At the core of the theoretical part of this thesis is a review of recent attempts at incorporating income distribution in economy-wide models. Most existing models are very detailed and complex but the mechanisms which dominate the results are simple and determined by conveniently extreme assumptions about prices and wages. Typically, prices are either all rigid or all flexible; the treatment of agriculture is unsatisfactory; and dualism in the labour market is ignored. A convincing case for the alleged insensitivity of the distribution of income to policy interventions can not be based on these models. The major part of the thesis describes two models, for Tanzania and Kenya, and their results. In the first model the emphasis is on the effects of migration and economic growth on the urban income distribution. It describes an economy in which neither prices nor wages respond to changes in market conditions. Distinctive features of the Kenya model include its submodel for smallholder agriculture, educational 'bumping' in the labour market and its emphasis on trade and pricing policies. The models are used to estimate the effects of policies (wages, trade, pricing, investment allocation, land redistribution) on growth and income distribution. The results contradict some of the conventional wisdom about the two countries. The models explicitly recognise a number of market imperfections, especially in the labour market, which are crucial in determining distributional changes but which are usually ignored in modelling. The results reveal a greater sensitivity of the distribution of income to changes in policies than has been found with some other models.

No description available.