The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality

• The essential guide for students and researchers interested in economic inequality
• Contains 27 original research contributions from the top names in economic inequality

Readership: Students, researchers, and policy makers with an interest in the economics of inequality and more generally those in related disciplines of development studies, politics, business, demography, and sociology.

Edited by Wiemer Salverda, Director of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies AIAS of the University of Amsterdam, and Coordinator of the European Low-wage Employment Research network LoWER, Brian Nolan, Economic and Social Research Institute ESRI and Network of Excellence EQUALSOC, and Timothy M. Smeeding, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Luxembourg Income Study LIS

Wiemer Salverda initiated the LoWER network in 1995 to bring together Europe's leading scholars on low pay and earnings inequality. With the help of the European Community's research funding, the network has been a prolific organizer of meetings and a fertile producer of publications. Moving from the University of Groningen's Economics Faculty he joined the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies of the University of Amsterdam in 2000, where he helped build an extensive portfolio of international research and research cooperation. He provides expert advice on low pay, wage inequality, the minimum wage, youth labour, older workers, employment policy, and labour market reform to the EU, OECD, ILO and the British Low Pay Commission. He chairs the Supervisory Board of the international WageIndicator which offers internet surveying of pay in many countries.

Brian Nolan is Professor of Public Policy in the School of Applied Social Science, UCD, Dublin. His research focuses on poverty, income inequality, the economics of social policy, and health economics, and recent publications include studies on social inclusion in the EU, equity in health service use, long-term trends in top incomes, child poverty, deprivation and multiple disadvantage, tax/welfare reform, and the minimum wage.

Timothy M. Smeeding is Distinguished Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University where he is also the founding director of the Center for Policy Research. He the Founder and Director Emeritus of the Luxembourg Income Study Project , which he began in 1983. His primary research focuses on national and cross-national comparisons of income and wealth inequality, social mobility, and poverty among vulnerable groups, including low-wage workers, children, the aged, and the disabled. He is spending the 2007-2008 academic year as a Visiting Fellow in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York where he is examining cross-national paterns of economic mobility.

"This book should be of interest to a vast audience...All chapters are clearly written and accessible, even for non specialists. This Handbook covers almost all the themes that are of importance to those interested in economic inequality, whether from a theoretical, empirical or policymaking perspective, which is a great achievement indeed." - Jacques Silber, Journal of Economic Inequality

Part 1 Inequality: Overview, Concepts and Measurement
1: Wiemer Salverda, Brian Nolan and Timothy M. Smeeding: Introduction: The scope and worries of economic inequality
2: John E. Roemer: Concepts and theories of inequality
3: Stephen Jenkins and Philippe van Kerm: The measurement of economic inequality
Part 2 The Extent of Inequality
4: Andrea Brandolini and Timothy M. Smeeding: Income inequality
5: Andrew Glyn: Functional and personal distribution
6: James B. Davies: Wealth and economic inequality
7: Andrew Leigh: High incomes and inequality
Part 3 Earnings inequality
8: Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn: Inequality and earnings distribution
9: Julia Lane: Inequality and the labour market: employers
10: Jelle Visser and Daniele Checchi: Inequality and the labour market: unions
11: Claudio Lucifora and Wiemer Salverda: Low pay
12: Mary B. Gregory: Gender and economic inequality
Part 4 Dimensions of inequality
13: Brian Nolan and Ive Marx: Inequality, poverty and exclusion
14: Nancy Folbre: Inequality, consumption and time use
15: Bernard van Praag and Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell: Inequality and happiness
16: Andrew Leigh, Christopher Jencks and Timothy M. Smeeding: Health and economic inequalities
17: Stephen Machin: Inequality and education
Part 5 The Dynamics of Inequality
18: Gary Burtless: Demographic transformation and economic inequality
19: Klaus F. Zimmermann and Martin Kahanec: International migration, ethnicity and economic inequality
20: Anders Bjorklund and Markus Jäntti: Intergenerational economic inequality
21: Richard V. Burkhauser and Kenneth A. Couch: Intragenerational inequality and intertemporal mobility
Part 6 Global perspectives on inequality
22: Sarah Voitchovsky: Inequality, growth and sectoral change
23: Richard B. Freeman: Trade, skills and globalization
24: Francisco H.G. Ferreira and Martin Ravallion: Poverty and Inequality: The Global Context
Part 7 Can inequalities be changed?
25: Gøsta Esping-Andersen and John Myles: Economic inequality and the welfare state
26: Nolan McCarty and Jonas Pontusson: Inequality and policy making
27: John E. Roemer: Prospects for achieving equality in market economies