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Begin New Search Topic Economic Inequality Publication Year within 10 Years

11. Immigration Detention, Inc.

Author:
Denise Gilman and Luis A. Romero
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
This article addresses the influence of economic inequality on immigration detention. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains roughly 350,000 migrants each year and maintains more than 30,000 beds each day. This massive detention system raises issues of economic power and powerlessness. This article connects, for the first time, the influence of economic inequality on system-wide immigration detention policy as well as on individual detention decisions. The article begins with a description of the systemic impact that for-profit prisons have had on the federal immigration detention system, by promoting wide-scale detention. The resulting expansion of detention has led to ever-increasing profitability for the private for-profit prison sector, which allows the companies to exercise even more influence over policymakers to achieve yet higher levels of detention. The influence of wealthy private prison corporations also affects the very nature of immigration detention, leading to the use of jail-like facilities that are the product offered by the private prison industry. The article then describes the mechanisms by which economic inequality dictates the likelihood and length of detention in individual cases. The detention or release decisions made by DHS in individual cases must account for the need to keep numerous detention beds full to satisfy the contracts made with powerful private prison companies. DHS regularly sets bond amounts at levels that are not correlated to flight risk or danger, but rather to the length of time that the individual must be held in detention to keep the available space full. The article presents data, obtained from immigration authorities, regarding detention and bond patterns at a specific detention center that demonstrate this point. The research finds an inverse relationship between the number of newly arriving immigrants in the detention center and the bond amounts set by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During times when new arrivals were few, the amount required to be released from detention on bond was high; during times when there were many new arrivals, bond amounts were reduced or set at zero. The article also presents another way in which economic inequality affects the likelihood of detention at the individual level. Release and detention are largely controlled through the use of monetary bond requirements, which must be paid in full. The regular use of financial bonds as the exclusive mechanism for release means that those migrants who are most able to pay are most likely to be released, without regard to their likelihood of absconding or endangering the community. Wealth thus determines detention rather than an individualized determination of the necessity of depriving an individual of liberty. The article urges that the role of economic inequality in immigration detention raises troubling issues of democratic governance and the commodification of traditional governmental functions. The current system also leads to an unjustifiable redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. Looking at immigration detention through the lens of economic inequality offers new lines of theoretical inquiry into immigration detention. It connects the discussion of immigration detention to scholarly critiques of for-profit prisons and the privatization of state security functions more generally. It also brings a new perspective to prior work in the immigration and criminal justice contexts, questioning the fairness and utility of requiring payment of monetary bonds to obtain liberty from detention. The article concludes with recommendations for reform. These reforms would help to sideline the influence of economic inequality in immigration detention decision making.
Topic:
Immigration, Economic Inequality, and Mass Incarceration
Political Geography:
United States

12. An Examination of Wage and Income Inequality within the American Farmworker Community

Author:
Marianne L Bowers and Daniel Chand
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
This article explores the reasons for earning inequalities among farmworkers. Using national data from the US Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Worker Survey (NAWS), we detail and examine differences in earnings among farmworkers based on certain characteristics identified in prior literature. We find that gender and youth are the most reliable predictors of farmworker earnings, with females and workers under 21 consistently earning less than other categories of farmworkers. In addition, we find that workers who seasonally follow crops are among the lowest earning farmworkers. We also confirm that, as expected, workers lacking authorized status earn less than those who have legal status. Surprisingly, however, foreign-born US citizens actually earn more than their US-born counterparts. These findings have substantial implications for policymakers and labor advocates who seek to improve the plight of US farmworkers.
Topic:
Agriculture, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Youth, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
United States

13. Inequality in the Twenty-First Century: A Review on Rockstars of the Realm

Author:
Martyna Berenika Linartas
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Postgraduate Program on Sustainable Development and Social Inequalities in the Andean Region (trAndeS)
Abstract:
Not only has been economic inequality on the rise, but also the research agenda on inequality has moved decisively from the fringes to the center of policy and academic interest. This new concern and concentration in respect to this topic, data records, and methodological approaches have given rise to a vast amount of literature. It is for this reason that I review the most important recent works engaging with the origins of economic inequality – a debate which remains highly controversial. The usual categorization to explain the different storytelling – “to be or not to be neoliberal” – seems inappropriate. In this review on “the rockstars of the realm” (Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson, Branko Milanovic and Walter Scheidel), I argue that the question and reason behind different approaches is instead: politics or the economy, which is the master that defines the space for action? The gradually established allegory of “the mirrored hourglass of inequality” illustrates the salience of this cleavage.
Topic:
International Political Economy, Political Economy, Capitalism, Inequality, Neoliberalism, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. Place-specific Determinants of Income Gaps: New Sub-National Evidence from Chiapas, Mexico

Author:
Ricardo Hausmann, Carlo Pietrobelli, and Miguel Angel Santos
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
The literature on income gaps between Chiapas and the rest of Mexico revolves around individual factors, such as education and ethnicity. Yet, twenty years after the Zapatista rebellion, the schooling gap between Chiapas and the other Mexican entities has shrunk while the income gap has widened, and we find no evidence indicating that Chiapas indigenes are worse-off than their likes elsewhere in Mexico. We explore a different hypothesis. Based on census data, we calculate the economic complexity index, a measure of the knowledge agglomeration embedded in the economic activities at a municipal level in Mexico. Economic complexity explains a larger fraction of the income gap than any individual factor. Our results suggest that chiapanecos are not the problem, the problem is Chiapas. These results hold when we extend our analysis to Mexico’s thirty-one federal entities, suggesting that place-specific determinants that have been overlooked in both the literature and policy, have a key role in the determination of income gaps.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Migration, Political Economy, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
Central America, Mexico, and Chiapas

15. Global Monetary Policy Divergence and the Reemergence of Global Imbalances

Author:
Daniel Gros
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Developed economies are paying remarkably little attention to coordinating their monetary policies. This is an unavoidable consequence of the independence of central banks, which faithfully follow their purely domestic mandates except in times of crisis. As a result, global monetary policies have reached unprecedented levels of divergence. This divergence is set to widen—primarily due to differences in the relative strength of labor markets—while global current account imbalances return. Meanwhile, exchange rates have not reacted as economists expected; the dollar has weakened even as policy rates have increased. Economic tensions will likely become more disruptive the longer global imbalances go uncorrected. Likewise, the global economy will become more vulnerable to shocks. Yet by focusing on bilateral trade imbalances, the United States has mistakenly singled out China when the global imbalances between the United States and the eurozone is the more critical issue. The growing global imbalances are reflected more in the eurozone current account surplus and U.S. fiscal policy than in China’s shrinking surplus.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Monetary Policy, Exchange Rate Policy, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16. Economic Dimensions of Personalized and Precision Medicine in Asia: Evidence from Breast Cancer Treatment in Taiwan

Author:
Jui-fen Rachel Lu and Karen Eggleston
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
High costs of precision medicine raise concerns about exacerbating income-related disparities in healthcare utilization and health outcomes. One approach to expanding coverage in Asia has been to cover the precision therapy but require the pharmaceutical firm to cover the costs of the companion diagnostic test. Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) adopted this approach for lung cancer, colorectal cancer and leukemia, but not for the first target therapy covered by NHI, trastuzumab for the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer. Analyzing a unique dataset linking medical claims, cancer registry data and proxies for income between 2004 and 2015, we find that lower-income patients are more likely to be diagnosed with later stages of breast cancer, and this pattern renders NHI coverage of anti-HER2 therapy pro-poor even before full coverage of the diagnostic tests. Moreover, the expansion of NHI coverage—including the FISH diagnostic test and trastuzumab for early-stage breast cancer—strengthened the pro-poor distribution of genetic testing and target treatment, albeit only marginally. The extent of pharmaceutical company coverage of testing and its impact on patient access are topics of our ongoing research, contrasting breast cancer with colorectal cancer.
Topic:
Health, Health Care Policy, Economic Inequality, and Medicine
Political Geography:
Taiwan and Asia

17. Which Inequalities Matter for Africa's Sustained Growth and Poverty Reduction?

Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF)
Abstract:
This paper produced by the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) examines the growth, poverty, and inequality dynamics. The findings suggest that policy efforts should target class inequality, especially gender and age related. Among other recommendations, this paper suggests that countries like South Africa should shift focus from interracial inequality to inter-class inequality broadly, which is affecting its economic performance. The aim is to provoke discussion, encourage further investigation, and lay bare for action the critical capacity challenges at the center of Africa’s observed inequality.
Topic:
Political Economy, Inequality, Economic Inequality, Capacity, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

18. DECOLONIZATION IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AND LEGAL PLURALISM, A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN BOLIVIA, COLOMBIA, AND ECUADOR

Author:
Sergio Miranda Hayes
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
In the academic world, scientific literature comes mainly from the western part of the globe. Ramón Grossfoguel believes that knowledge is determined by power relations in the "post-colonial" era (Grossfoguel, 2002: 16). This means that Western powers dominate the academic world. In constitutional law, this is not the exception. However, while we can accept that it is true that many constitutional provisions, doctrine, jurisprudence and theories of Western constitutional law have influenced Latin American countries, most of these countries have also developed their own constitutional systems that have specific and new features, whose unique identity differentiates them from other systems in the world. In this paper, I will try to study the special features that Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia have in the recognition of indigenous rights and legal pluralism, whose discursive axis entails a “decolonizing” spirit which is the retrieval of their own institutions against the trends of hegemonic governance of the western culture as I will explain later. Latin America has faced numerous problems concerning social differentiation. In the opinion of one of the most cited authors in Latin American constitutional law, Raquel Yrigoyen, the disadvantaged were left behind from the social, economic and political issues through legal measures created by people of a favored minority, in order to maintain privileges (Yrigoyen, 2011: 139). In the case of Latin America, many of the disadvantaged match to be those survivors of the brutal Spanish conquest; the native Indians. I have chosen these three countries since they have a significant indigenous population; more than 36.6 million indigenous people in the region. In Bolivia, the number rises to 4,115,222 natives, in Ecuador 1018176,and in Colombia 1392623. (World Bank, 2014: 24-25) The Constitutions of Colombia (1991), Ecuador (2008) and Bolivia (2009) reflect the new “decolonizing” ideology; Colombia through its jurisprudence, on the one hand, and Bolivia and Ecuador, proclaiming themselves "Plurinational”countries on the other. All made great strides in recognizing indigenous rights and, consequently, in gaining their social inclusion. (Gargarella, 2014: 175) Constitutional systems are a product of history and the struggle of peoples. In these cases, the effort to include indigenous peoples in the economic, political and social spheres resulted in these new constitutional models which can be understood through a comparative study.By understanding this, advantages and disadvantages of each country to improve social inclusion of indigenous peoples in all the mentioned spheres can be found. In the first title, I will talk about the meaning of legal pluralism. In the second, I will discussthe new models of statewhich are conditioned by legal pluralism and indigenous rights. In the third, I will address indigenous autonomies and jurisdictions that are the subject of our study. And in the remaining two titles, I will discuss the most distinctive features, and rights arising from the recognition of this unique legal pluralism. All this with the purpose of exposing the new constitutional spirit of "decolonization" of these countries.
Topic:
Human Rights, Post Colonialism, Legal Theory, Colonialism, Decolonization, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
United States, Colombia, South America, Latin America, North America, Ecuador, and Bolivia

19. Towards a More Equal Indonesia: How the government can take action to close the gap between the richest and the rest

Author:
Luke Gibson
Publication Date:
02-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
The gap between the richest and the rest in Indonesia has grown faster in the past two decades than in any other country in South-East Asia. The four richest men in Indonesia now have more wealth than the poorest 100 million people. Inequality is slowing down poverty reduction, dampening economic growth and threatening social cohesion. President Jokowi has made fighting inequality his administration's top priority for 2017. This report shows how he could achieve this by enforcing a living wage for all workers, increasing spending on public services, and making big corporations and rich individuals pay their fair share of tax.
Topic:
Inequality, Economic Inequality, Social Cohesion, and Elites
Political Geography:
Indonesia, Asia, and Southeast Asia

20. Building the Peace. Rural Education and conflict in Colombia

Author:
Mabel Gonzalez Bustelo
Publication Date:
09-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
The conflict that has affected Colombia for the last 50 years, has reinforced economic inequalities and widened the divide between urban and rural areas. It has also severely affected children’s access to quality education. There is now a three-year difference in learning levels between children in the same grade in urban and rural areas. To bridge this gap and ensure sustainable reintegration of children formerly associated with armed groups, considerable investments should be made to strengthen access to quality education in rural areas. This is a co-publication in Spanish published by NOREF and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
Topic:
Agriculture, Poverty, Child Poverty, Conflict, Economic Inequality, Urban, and Rural
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America