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We utilise repeated cross sections of micro data from several countries, available from the Luxembourg Income Study, LIS, to estimate labour supply elasticities, both at the intensive and extensive margin. The benefit of the data is that it spans over four decades and includes a large number of tax reform episodes, with tax rate variation arising both from cross-sectional and country-level differences. Using these data, we investigate whether micro and macro estimates differ in a systematic way. The results do not provide clear support to the view that elasticities at the macro level would be higher than corresponding micro elasticities.

Using LIS data, Jäntti examines levels and trends in income inequality among families in five industrialized countries, namely Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, exploring the possibility that markets, the public sector or demographic shifts would account for changes. Inequality increased in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, but did not increase in Canada and the Netherlands. He finds that earnings account for much of the observed increase in income inequality, partly due to increased inequality of head's earnings and partly because of an increased share of spouse's earnings in household income. The public sector can, in general, be assigned a moderating effect on these changes. Demographic shifts cannot be assigned any major role in the increase in inequality.

This paper reviews Finland's growth strategy in the postwar decades. Finland was able to initiate an impressive mobilization of resources during this period, reflected mostly in a high rate of capital accumulation for manufacturing industries. This was achieved by an unorthodox combination of dirigiste means and a basic commitment to upholding the market economy. The state acted as a net saver, and credit was rationed to productive investment outlays. This policy package may have been boosted by the country's precarious international position during the cold war, so that an economic failure would have been very risky indeed. We argue also that incomes policies and welfare reforms were important in sustaining the necessary political compromise that underpinned the Finnish development state.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Introduction -- Chapter One. How Has Income Inequality Grown? The Reshaping of the Income Distribution in LIS Countries -- Chapter Two. On the Identification of the Middle Class -- Chapter Three. Has Rising Inequality Reduced Middle-Class Income Growth? -- Chapter Four. Welfare Regimes, Cohorts, and the Middle Classes -- Chapter Five. Political Sources of Government Redistribution in High-Income Countries -- Chapter Six. Income Distribution, Inequality Perceptions, and Redistributive Preferences in European Countries -- Chapter Seven. Women's Employment and Household Income Inequality -- Chapter Eight. Women's Employment, Unpaid Work, and Economic Inequality -- Chapter Nine. Women's Work, Family Earnings, and Public Policy -- Chapter Ten. The Distribution of Assets and Debt -- Chapter Eleven. The Joint Distribution of Income and Wealth -- Chapter Twelve. The Fourth Retirement Pillar in Rich Countries -- Chapter Thirteen. Public Pension Entitlements and the Distribution of Wealth -- Chapter Fourteen. Income and Wealth Inequality in Japan -- Chapter Fifteen. Income Inequality in Boom and Bust: A Tale from Iceland's Bubble Economy -- Chapter Sixteen. Horizontal and Vertical Inequalities in India -- Chapter Seventeen. Post-Apartheid Changes in South African Inequality -- Conclusion -- Index -- Studies in Social Inequality

This study uses an extraordinary Swedish data set to explore the sources of the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status. Merging data from administrative sources and censuses, we investigate the association between sons' and daughters' socioeconomic outcomes and those of their biological and rearing parents. Our analysis focuses on children raised in six different family circumstances: raised by both biological parents, raised by the biological mother without a stepfather, raised by the biological mother with a stepfather, raised by the biological father without a stepmother, raised by the biological father with a stepmother, and raised by two adoptive parents. Relative to the existing literature, the most remarkable feature of our data set is that it contains information on the biological parents even when they are not the rearing parents. We specify a simple additive model of pre-birth (including genetic) and post-birth influences and examine the model's ability to provide a unified account of the intergenerational associations in all six family types. Our results suggest substantial roles for both pre-birth and post-birth factors.

This paper assesses women's poverty in 26 diverse LIS countries - five Anglophone countries, six Continental European countries, four Nordic countries, two Eastern European countries, three Southern European countries, and six Latin American countries. Our analyses are organized around four questions: (1) What is the probability that prime-age women, compared to their male counterparts, live in poor households? (2) How does the overall pattern differ when we consider pre-transfer as well as post-transfer income, and when we consider absolute as well as relative poverty? (3) How do women's poverty rates, compared to men's, vary by family type, by educational attainment, and by labour market status? (4) How does our cross-national portrait of gender and poverty shift when we consider person-level income as well as household-level income? We conclude that: women's market income lags men's everywhere; public income transfers matter for reducing poverty disparities by gender; families are crucial venues for income support for partnered women, especially women with weak labor market attachment; single mothers remain extremely economically vulnerable in many countries; and institutional contexts matter.

Abstract
This study uses an extraordinary Swedish data set to explore the sources of the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status. Merging data from administrative sources and censuses, we investigate the association between sons' and daughters' socioeconomic outcomes and those of their biological and rearing parents. Our analysis focuses on children raised in six different family circumstances: raised by both biological parents, raised by the biological mother without a stepfather, raised by the biological mother with a stepfather, raised by the biological father without a stepmother, raised by the biological father with a stepmother, and raised by two adoptive parents. Relative to the existing literature, the most remarkable feature of our data set is that it contains information on the biological parents even when they are not the rearing parents. We specify a simple additive model of pre-birth (including genetic) and post-birth influences and examine the model's ability to provide a unified account of the intergenerational associations in all six family types. Our results suggest substantial roles for both pre-birth and post-birth factors.

The goal of this study is to examine trends in the importance of family background in determining adult income in Sweden. We investigate whether the association between family background and income in Sweden has changed for cohorts born 1932-1968. Our main finding is that the share of the variance in long-run income that is attributable to family background, the so-called brother correlation in income, has fallen by some 11 percentage points from 0.34 for the cohorts of brothers born in the early 1930s to below 0.23 for the cohorts born around 1950. From then on, the correlations have been more or less stable and are in line with earlier estimates. When we adjust income for the income return to years of schooling, we find constant brother correlations in income. The main effect is coming from changes in the distribution of schooling across cohorts. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that education policies have been a key factor in equalizing life chances in Sweden.