How redistributive policies reduce market inequality: education premiums in 22 OECD countries

Weisstanner, David; Armingeon, Klaus

doi:10.1093/ser/mwy018

Cited by 18 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, Bornschier (2010, 27) notes that the economic difficulties of low-skilled workers have emerged simultaneously with rising income inequality in many countries. However, the claim that lowskilled workers are generally worse-off from globalization is difficult to reconcile with the large variation in wage gaps between low-educated and high-educated employees across countries and over time (Autor 2014;Hanushek et al 2015;Weisstanner and Armingeon 2018). The dichotomy between low-skilled and high-skilled occupations also ignores the large variation in earnings developments within occupations, which emerges as a crucial driver of overall earnings inequality (van Heuvelen 2018).…”

Section: Globalization Structural Changes and Income Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Income inequality, status decline and support for the radical right

Engler

Weisstanner

2019

The European Social Model Under Pressure

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Support for the radical right has risen in most Western democracies. Globalization and modernization processes are usually seen as the source of this development, reshaping political conflicts and producing new groups of people that feel 'left behind'. However, few studies test how the relatively common trends in globalization shape the variation in the timing and extent of radical right support across countries. Focusing on the economic dimension of the 'losers of globalization' theory, we argue that income inequality is a suitable indicator to measure the extent to which some groups have fallen behind and to capture the fear of decline in material well-being of people not (yet) at the bottom of the income distribution. The relative deterioration in material conditions, we argue further, translates into a lower subjective social status of vulnerable groups who then turn towards the radical right. By cultivating nativism and thus providing non-economic criteria of social status, the radical right becomes more attractive as societies become more unequal. We show evidence for our hypothesis by comparing vote shares for radical right parties in 20 Western democracies between 1980 and 2016. The findings indicate that rising income inequality substantially increases support for the radical right in the long run. In addition, rising inequality translates into lower subjective social status of nontertiary educated men and this process of status decline further contributes to radical right support. Hence, there are both material and non-material linkages between income inequality and radical right support.

show abstract

Section: Globalization Structural Changes and Income Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Income inequality, status decline and support for the radical right

Engler

Weisstanner

2019

The European Social Model Under Pressure

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Whilst public investments in education guarantee universal access to education, large private expenditures often limit access to (higher) education to those families that can afford it, thereby increasing educational inequalities (Busemeyer and Iversen 2014;Busemeyer 2015). Weisstanner and Armingeon (2018) for instance find that public spending on education reduces wage differentials between high and low-educated workers, whereas private spending on education increases them. The results for model 14 are highly similar to the results obtained for our preferred model presented in the first column.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Investment, Employment Outcomes and Policy and Institutional Complementarities: A Comparative Analysis across 26 OECD countries

Bakker

Vliet

2019

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social investment has become a widely debated topic in the comparative welfare state literature. To date, there are, however, only a couple of systematic comparative empirical analyses that focus on the employment outcomes associated with social investment. This study contributes to the social investment literature by empirically analysing the extent to which variation in employment outcomes across 26 OECD countries over the period 1990-2010 can be explained by effort on five social investment policies using time-series cross-sectional analyses. Apart from focusing on employment rates, we additionally explore associations with qualitative aspects of the employment outcomes relying on novel indicators. The analyses account for theoretically relevant confounding variables that were omitted in existing studies, notably labour market institutions. We find robust evidence for a positive association between effort on active labour market policies and employment rates. For other policies we obtain mixed results, dependent on the employment outcome being studied. Subsequently, we explore the role of policy and institutional complementarities in the assessment of the employment effects of social investment policies. We show how social investment policies interact and how their effect is moderated by effort on other policies. Additionally, our analysis shows that the complementarity of social investment policies varies across welfare state regimes. Finally, explorative analyses suggest that there are positive synergies between more and better jobs, which could in part be attributable to effort on social investment.

show abstract

“…In contrast, he found that public spending on all levels of education was negatively related to the Gini of disposable household income in the same country/year observations. Weisstanner and Armingeon (2018) found that public expenditure on education depressed and private expenditures on education increased the education premium in 22 OECD countries between the early 1990s and 2014. In their analysis of top 1% income shares, Huber, Huo, and Stephens (2018) found that the private share of total tertiary spending was strongly associated with greater top income shares.…”

Section: Literature and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The literature has identified an affinity between education systems and welfare state regimes (Iversen & Stephens, 2008;Mosher, 2015;West & Niolai, 2013). 1 Weisstanner and Armingeon (2018) found that high average tax rates and high levels of spending other than on the elderly depressed the education premium. The embeddedness of education systems in welfare state regimes is important because high levels of poverty depress skills acquisition at the bottom.…”

Section: Literature and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Weisstanner and Armingeon's education premium measure calculated from LIS data is highly correlated (r=.91) toHanushek's measure of skill returns calculated from the PIAAC data, which gives one great confidence in the validity of the measure.3 Because not all states provide data on pre-tax income, full-time status, or education, certain cases have special calculation procedures. For information on these cases, seeWeisstanner and Armingeon (2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Private education and inequality in the knowledge economy

Huber

Stephens

2019

Policy and Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the consequences of public and private spending on education at all levels, looking at skills and income inequality. We use data for 22 affluent democracies from 1960 or 1995 (depending on data availability) to 2017. High levels of public education spending consistently lower income inequality, both measured as wage dispersion and as the education premium. In contrast, higher levels of private education spending are associated with both higher wage dispersion and a higher education premium. We show that this effect works in part through differential skills acquisition. Public education spending raises the math scores of 15-years old students at the mean and at the 25 th percentile, but private education spending has no effect on skills at these levels. We find the same pattern among skills of adults; public education spending raises skills at the 25 th percentile and the mean; private spending has no effect. Finally, we also show that higher levels of adult skills indeed depress the education premium.

show abstract

How redistributive policies reduce market inequality: education premiums in 22 OECD countries

Cited by 18 publications

References 41 publications

Income inequality, status decline and support for the radical right

Income inequality, status decline and support for the radical right

Social Investment, Employment Outcomes and Policy and Institutional Complementarities: A Comparative Analysis across 26 OECD countries

Private education and inequality in the knowledge economy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About