IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2025-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Kuznets in the twenty-first century: Mexico and United States compared

Author

Listed:
  • Saumik Paul
  • Kunal Sen

Abstract

Building upon a multisectoral framework in light of the Kuznetsian paradigm, this paper analyses the relationship between structural transformation and income inequality. Empirical evidence is drawn using a large census dataset consisting of more than 22 million individuals from Mexico and the United States in 2000 and 2020. The Gini coefficient of income in Mexico decreased from 0.49 in 2000 to 0.43 in 2020, whereas it slightly increased in the US from 0.49 in 2000 to 0.51 in 2020.

Suggested Citation

  • Saumik Paul & Kunal Sen, 2025. "Kuznets in the twenty-first century: Mexico and United States compared," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2025-13, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2025-13-kuznets-twenty-first-century.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Federico Huneeus & Richard Rogerson, 2024. "Heterogeneous Paths of Industrialization," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(3), pages 1746-1774.
    2. Robinson, Sherman, 1976. "A Note on the U Hypothesis Relating Income Inequality and Economic Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(3), pages 437-440, June.
    3. Gary S. Fields, 1979. "A Welfare Economic Approach to Growth and Distribution in the Dual Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(3), pages 325-353.
    4. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2003. "Measuring pro-poor growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 93-99, January.
    5. Sergio Firpo & Cristine Pinto, 2016. "Identification and Estimation of Distributional Impacts of Interventions Using Changes in Inequality Measures," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 457-486, April.
    6. Rothe, Christoph, 2010. "Nonparametric estimation of distributional policy effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 155(1), pages 56-70, March.
    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. Bourguignon, Francois, 2005. "The Effect of Economic Growth on Social Structures," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 27, pages 1701-1747, Elsevier.
    2. Temple, Jonathan & Ying, Huikang, 2014. "Life During Structural Transformation," CEPR Discussion Papers 10297, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Bourguignon, Francois & Morrisson, Christian, 1998. "Inequality and development: the role of dualism," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 233-257.
    4. Ying-Ying Lee, 2018. "Partial Mean Processes with Generated Regressors: Continuous Treatment Effects and Nonseparable Models," Papers 1811.00157, arXiv.org.
    5. Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose & Vassilis Tselios, 2009. "Education And Income Inequality In The Regions Of The European Union," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(3), pages 411-437, August.
    6. Paul Maarek & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2020. "Development and the Labor Share," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 34(1), pages 232-257.
    7. Martin Ravallion & Shaohua Chen, 2022. "Is that really a Kuznets curve? Turning points for income inequality in China," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(4), pages 749-776, December.
    8. Khalil Ahmad & Safdar Ali & Ayesha Haider & Muhammad Shahid & Muhammad Mudassar Naushahi, 2021. "Fiscal Implications for Rural-Urban Income Inequality: The Case of Pakistan," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(2), pages 246-259.
    9. Fields,Gary S., 2005. "A guide to multisector labor market models," Social Protection and Labor Policy and Technical Notes 32547, The World Bank.
    10. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    11. Paolo Liberati & Giuliano Resce, 2022. "Regional Well-Being and its Inequality in the OECD Member Countries," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 671-700, September.
    12. Alejo, Javier & Galvao, Antonio F. & Montes-Rojas, Gabriel, 2018. "Quantile continuous treatment effects," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 8(C), pages 13-36.
    13. Jean-Marc Fournier & Isabell Koske, 2012. "Less Income Inequality and More Growth – Are they Compatible? Part 7. The Drivers of Labour Earnings Inequality – An Analysis Based on Conditional and Unconditional Quantile Regressions," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 930, OECD Publishing.
    14. James E. Rauch, 1993. "Economic Development, Urban Underemployment, and Income Inequality," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 26(4), pages 901-918, November.
    15. Paul Maarek & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2014. "Labor Share and development," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) 201410, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS.
    16. Ghosh, Pallab Kumar, 2014. "The contribution of human capital variables to changes in the wage distribution function," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 58-69.
    17. Sergio P. Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2018. "Decomposing Wage Distributions Using Recentered Influence Function Regressions," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-40, May.
    18. David Castells-Quintana & Raul Ramos & Vicente Royuela, 2015. "Income inequality in European Regions: Recent trends and determinants," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 35(2), pages 123-146, October.
    19. Ferreira,Francisco H. G. & Firpo,Sergio & Galvao,Antonio F., 2017. "Estimation and inference for actual and counterfactual growth incidence curves," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7933, The World Bank.
    20. Wenli Cheng & Yongzheng Wu, 2017. "Understanding the Kuznets Process—An Empirical Investigation of Income Inequality in China: 1978–2011," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 134(2), pages 631-650, November.

    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:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-13. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    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.