TY  - JOUR
AU  - Higgins,Matthew
AU  - Williamson,Jeffrey G.
TI  - Explaining Inequality the World Round:  Cohort Size, Kuznets Curves, andOpenness
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7224
PY  - 1999
Y2  - July 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7224
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7224.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Matthew J. Higgins
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
International Economics Function
Federal Reserve P.O. Station
New York, New York 10045
E-Mail: matthew.higgins@ny.frb.org

Jeffrey G. Williamson
350 South Hamilton Street #1002
Madison, WI 53703
Tel: 608-441-0023
Fax: 608-204-0783
E-Mail: jwilliam@fas.harvard.edu
AB  - Klaus Deininger and Lyn Squire have recently produced an inequality data base for a panel of countries from the 1960s to the 1990s. We use these data to decompose the sources of inequality into three central parts:  the demographic or cohort size effect; the so-called Kuznets Curve or demand effects; and the commitment to globalization or policy effects. We also control for education supply, the so-called natural resource curse and other variables suggested by the literature. While the Kuznets Curve comes out of hiding when the inequality relationship is conditioned by the other two, cohort size seems to be the most important force at work.  We resolve the apparent conflict between this macro finding on cohort size and the contrary implications of recent research based on micro data.
ER  -