IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lev/wrkpap/wp_487.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Class Structure and Economic Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Edward N. Wolff
  • Ajit Zacharias

Abstract

Existing empirical schemas of class structure do not specify the capitalist class in an adequate manner. We propose a schema in which the specification of capitalist households is based on wealth thresholds. Individuals in noncapitalist households are assigned class locations based on their position in the labor process. The schema is designed to address the question of the relationship between class structure and overall economic inequality. Our analysis of the U.S. data shows that class divisions among households, especially the large gaps between capitalist households and everyone else, contribute substantially to overall inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward N. Wolff & Ajit Zacharias, 2007. "Class Structure and Economic Inequality," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_487, Levy Economics Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_487
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_487.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shujie Yao, 1999. "On the decomposition of Gini coefficients by population class and income source: a spreadsheet approach and application," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(10), pages 1249-1264.
    2. Branko Milanovic & Shlomo Yitzhak, 2006. "Decomposing World Income Distribution: Does The World Have A Middle Class?," IBT Journal of Business Studies (JBS), Ilma University, Faculty of Management Science, vol. 2(2), pages 88-110.
    3. Yitzhaki, Shlomo & Lerman, Robert I, 1991. "Income Stratification and Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 37(3), pages 313-329, September.
    4. Richard Hogan, 2005. "Was Wright Wrong? High‐Class Jobs and the Professional Earnings Advantage," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 86(3), pages 645-663, September.
    5. Edward Wolff & Ajit Zacharias, 2009. "Household wealth and the measurement of economic well-being in the United States," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(2), pages 83-115, June.
    6. repec:rus:hseeco:15683 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Milanovic, Branko & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 2002. "Decomposing World Income Distribution: Does the World Have a Middle Class?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 48(2), pages 155-178, June.
    8. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1994. "Economic distance and overlapping of distributions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 147-159, March.
    9. Jonathan P. Goldstein, 2006. "Marxian Microfoundations: Contribution or Detour?," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 38(4), pages 569-594, December.
    10. Shlomo Yitzhaki & Robert I. Lerman, 1991. "Income Stratification And Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 37(3), pages 313-329, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Allanson, Paul, 2014. "Income stratification and between-group inequality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 227-230.
    2. Allanson, Paul, 2014. "Income stratification and the measurement of interdistributional inequality between multiple groups," SIRE Discussion Papers 2015-34, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    3. Stéphane Mussard & Françoise Seyte & Michel Terraza, 2006. "La décomposition de l’indicateur de Gini en sous-groupes : une revue de la littérature," Cahiers de recherche 06-11, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    4. Monojit Chatterji & Sushil Mohan & Sayantan Ghosh Dastidar, 2015. "Determinants of public education expenditure: evidence from Indian states," International Journal of Education Economics and Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(1), pages 1-19.
    5. Allanson, Paul, 2014. "Income stratification and the measurement of interdistributional inequality between multiple groups," 2007 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, 2007, Portland, Oregon TN 2015-34, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    6. Shlomo Yitzhaki & Edna Schechtman, 2009. "The “melting pot”: A success story?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(2), pages 137-151, June.
    7. Antonella D’Agostino & Andrea Regoli & Giancarlo Cornelio & Fabio Berti, 2016. "Studying Income Inequality of Immigrant Communities in Italy," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 83-100, May.
    8. Lagravinese, Raffaele & Liberati, Paolo & Resce, Giuliano, 2019. "Exploring health outcomes by stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis: An application to Italian regions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 274(3), pages 1168-1179.
    9. Shlomo Yitzhaki, 2003. "Gini’s Mean difference: a superior measure of variability for non-normal distributions," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(2), pages 285-316.
    10. Jørgen Modalsli, 2017. "Decomposing Global Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(3), pages 445-463, September.
    11. Paolo Liberati, 2015. "The World Distribution of Income And Its Inequality, 1970–2009," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(2), pages 248-273, June.
    12. Nathalie Chusseau & Joel Hellier, 2014. "Globalization and social segmentation," Working Papers 339, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    13. Paul Allanson, 2018. "On the Measurement of the Overall Degree of Income Stratification between Groups," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 388-405, June.
    14. Monti, maria & Santoro, alessandro, 2010. "Stratification and between-group inequality: a new approach to measurement," MPRA Paper 29361, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Magne Mogstad, 2007. "Measuring Income Inequality under Restricted Interpersonal Comparability," Discussion Papers 498, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    16. Joachim Frick & Jan Goebel, 2008. "Regional Income Stratification in Unified Germany Using a Gini Decomposition Approach," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(4), pages 555-577.
    17. Carlos Gradín & Máximo Rossi, 2006. "Income Distribution and Income Sources in Uruguay," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 49-69, May.
    18. Rolf Aaberge & Steinar Bjerve & Kjell Doksum, 2005. "Decomposition of rank-dependent measures of inequality by subgroups," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 493-503.
    19. Aisling J. Reynolds-Feighan, 2007. "Carrier Network Structures and the Spatial Distribution of Air Traffic in the European Air Transport Market, 1996-2006," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, vol. 97(1), pages 243-243, January-F.
    20. Geoffrey Warner, 2001. "A lorenz curve based index of income stratification," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 28(3), pages 41-57, December.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elizabeth Dunn (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.levyinstitute.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.