TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
TI  - Inequality
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11511
PY  - 2005
Y2  - August 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11511
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11511.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2005-08-01
AB  - This paper reviews five striking facts about inequality across countries. As Kuznets (1955) famously
first documented, inequality first rises and then falls with income. More unequal societies are much
less likely to have democracies or governments that respect property rights. Unequal societies have
less redistribution, and we have little idea whether this relationship is caused by redistribution
reducing inequality or inequality reducing redistribution. Inequality and ethnic heterogeneity are
highly correlated, either because of differences in educational heritages across ethnicities or because
ethnic heterogeneity reduces redistribution. Finally, there is much more inequality and less
redistribution in the U.S. than in most other developed nations.
ER  -