This paper examines the impact of dowry on household income mobility in Indian context. Dowry has many adverse effects in the society. Dowry, a key component of the extravagant wedding celebrations that are part of Indian culture, may act as a hindrance on efficacy of poverty alleviation programs. We utilize the two rounds of Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS) data to evaluate if dowry expenditure on a daughter’s marriage can explain the income mobility and possibly if it forces some households into poverty trap. Regression results suggest that dowry expenditure constitutes a significant financial burden to high income households contrary to the anecdotal belief that it more adversely affects lower income households.

The thesis presents results from five related studies concerned with the development and application of analytical techniques for the measurement of inequality. Four of the research pieces are analytical works focusing on the methodology of inequality measurement, while the fifth is an empirical study of income mobility and inequality in Australia. The most significant work of the dissertation is concerned with the derivation of a new information-theoretic index for the measurement of inequality. The proposed index is based upon the same relationship between information theory and inequality measurement used for the construction of Generalized Entropy (GE) inequality measures and is equivalent to a technique established in the field of signal processing. The measure shares the axiomatic superiority of GE measures over other measurement techniques and exhibits an additional attractive decomposition property such that the contribution of any set of individuals towards inequality is directly observable. No existing axiomatically complete measure possesses this property and thus the new measure has a degree of dominance over other techniques such as the Gini coefficient and Theil’s entropy measures. An empirical illustration of the new index using U.S. unit record income data is provided to demonstrate the alternative decomposition technique. It is shown that persons self-described as ‘White’ or ‘Japanese’ in the U.S. census drive a greater proportion of total inequality than persons from other racial groups relative to their respective population sizes. Other theoretical work in the thesis focuses on the construction and interpretation of Lorenz curves. A new parametric functional form for estimating the Lorenz curve is presented and closed form expressions for the implicit probability density function, cumulative distribution function and Gini coefficient are derived. Furthermore the proposed Lorenz curve is shown to provide a better fit to a range of real world data than other single parameter specifications such as the Pareto formulation. In a separate chapter the issue of Lorenz curve determination is addressed by determining a convex spline to interpolate Lorenz curves from grouped data. The spline is shown to provide better estimates of the Gini coefficient than other interpolation techniques and always satisfies the regularity conditions required for a Lorenz curve. Additional work on Lorenz curves examines the link between these functions and GE inequality metrics. In the thesis it is shown that these indices may be derived as direct functions of the Lorenz curve and analytical expressions for various GE measures are given in terms of Lorenz curve parameters. These results provide a basis for studying the effect of Lorenz curve construction upon the calculation of entropy based inequality measurements. The thesis concludes with an empirical study into income inequality and mobility in Australia using the HILDA unit record and household data panel. The research shows that Australian income mobility is slightly lower than in other developed countries and that much of the observed mobility occurs at the lower end of the income distribution.

The thesis presents results from five related studies concerned with the development and application of analytical techniques for the measurement of inequality. Four of the research pieces are analytical works focusing on the methodology of inequality measurement, while the fifth is an empirical study of income mobility and inequality in Australia. The most significant work of the dissertation is concerned with the derivation of a new information-theoretic index for the measurement of inequality. The proposed index is based upon the same relationship between information theory and inequality measurement used for the construction of Generalized Entropy (GE) inequality measures and is equivalent to a technique established in the field of signal processing. The measure shares the axiomatic superiority of GE measures over other measurement techniques and exhibits an additional attractive decomposition property such that the contribution of any set of individuals towards inequality is directly observable. No existing axiomatically complete measure possesses this property and thus the new measure has a degree of dominance over other techniques such as the Gini coefficient and Theil’s entropy measures. An empirical illustration of the new index using U.S. unit record income data is provided to demonstrate the alternative decomposition technique. It is shown that persons self-described as ‘White’ or ‘Japanese’ in the U.S. census drive a greater proportion of total inequality than persons from other racial groups relative to their respective population sizes. Other theoretical work in the thesis focuses on the construction and interpretation of Lorenz curves. A new parametric functional form for estimating the Lorenz curve is presented and closed form expressions for the implicit probability density function, cumulative distribution function and Gini coefficient are derived. Furthermore the proposed Lorenz curve is shown to provide a better fit to a range of real world data than other single parameter specifications such as the Pareto formulation. In a separate chapter the issue of Lorenz curve determination is addressed by determining a convex spline to interpolate Lorenz curves from grouped data. The spline is shown to provide better estimates of the Gini coefficient than other interpolation techniques and always satisfies the regularity conditions required for a Lorenz curve. Additional work on Lorenz curves examines the link between these functions and GE inequality metrics. In the thesis it is shown that these indices may be derived as direct functions of the Lorenz curve and analytical expressions for various GE measures are given in terms of Lorenz curve parameters. These results provide a basis for studying the effect of Lorenz curve construction upon the calculation of entropy based inequality measurements. The thesis concludes with an empirical study into income inequality and mobility in Australia using the HILDA unit record and household data panel. The research shows that Australian income mobility is slightly lower than in other developed countries and that much of the observed mobility occurs at the lower end of the income distribution.

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Social capital is an important predictor of socioeconomic attainment, defined here as household income, but it is less clear how this relationship may vary by socioeconomic status (SES). Coleman's (1988) theory of social capital suggests that context is likely to influence exchanges of capital. Indeed, theory and research suggest that SES may either intensify or compensate for social capital in its relation to socioeconomic attainment. I seek to identify and understand these potential interactions using data from 101,163 participants of the European Social Survey (ESS). Results indicate that while social trust and both absolute and relative social involvement--two common measurements of social capital--predict socioeconomic attainment, the link with relative social involvement was stronger for individuals with lower SES, suggesting a compensation effect. Meanwhile, the link between absolute social involvement and socioeconomic attainment was stronger for those with higher SES, suggesting an intensification effect and highlighting that effects may vary across different measures of social capital. More generally, however, it is clear that SES is a meaningful factor in the value or use of at least some features of social capital.

The paper uses data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2005 to analyze intergenerational income mobility in Austria compared to other European Union members. Applying various methodological approaches like least squares estimations and quantile regressions we reveal substantial differences in intergenerational mobility between Scandinavian countries and Continental Europe. The results show that income class rigidities in most European countries are striking compared to the Nordic countries. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays. The first essay concerns educational choice and the returns to college in Sweden. I apply a recently introduced econometric framework that allows for self selection and treatment effect heterogeneity. I also examine the influence of cognitive and noncognitive ability on college choice and the returns to college. Essays two through four concern different aspects of intergenerational income mobility. In the second essay, we study the impact on mobility estimates from heterogeneous income profiles and, more specifically, life-cycle bias. We use nearly career-long income measures for both fathers and sons to give a detailed account of this bias and assess recent methods to deal with it. In the third essay, we present a simple model of intergenerational transmission and use it to analyze the dynamic behavior of the intergenerational income elasticity following structural changes. We find that past structural frameworks, for example in the form of past policies or institutions, matter for current trends in mobility. The fourth essay provides a cross-country perspective on intergenerational income mobility. We construct comparable data sets for Sweden and the UK and account for country differences in the role of parental income for various productivity traits of children. Finally, we examine whether such differences can explain the country difference in intergenerational income mobility.