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This article assesses how the economic context of higher education expansion since the mid-20th century has shaped families' financial lives-in terms of income and wealth/debt-as well as how these trends have differed for Black and White women and men. We use data from the NLSY-79 (comprising trailing-edge Baby Boomers) and NLSY-97 (comprising early Millennials) to show how academically similar students in these two cohorts fared in terms of educational attainment, household income, household wealth, and total student debt accrued by age 35. While we discuss findings across race-gender groups, our results call attention to the education-related economic disadvantages faced by Black women that have accelerated across cohorts. Over time, Black women's educational attainment has increased substantially, and high-achieving Black women, in particular, have become uniquely likely to progress beyond the BA. But while high-achieving Black women have made many advances in higher education, they also have become more likely than similarly high-achieving White men, White women, and Black men to have zero or negative wealth at the household level, and to accrue student debt for themselves and for their children. Our findings demonstrate that the costs of expanded access to credit for higher education have not been borne equally across race, gender, and achievement, and that these patterns have multigenerational financial consequences for college attendees and their families.

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OBJECTIVE: Research is available on improved coverage and practices from several large-scale maternal nutrition programmes, but not much is known on change in inequalities. This study analyses wealth and education inequality using Erreygers and Concentration indices for four indicators: adequate iron and folic acid (IFA) consumption, women's dietary diversity, and counselling on IFA and dietary diversity. DESIGN: A pre-test-post-test, control group design. SETTING: Maternal nutrition intervention programmes conducted in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia during 2015-2022. PARTICIPANTS: Recently delivered women (RDW) and pregnant women (PW). RESULTS: Statistically significant reductions in education inequality were observed for adequate IFA consumption, counselling on IFA and dietary diversity in intervention areas of Bangladesh and for adequate IFA consumption in intervention areas of Burkina Faso.A significant decrease in wealth inequality was observed for adequate IFA consumption in the intervention areas of Bangladesh, whereas a significant increase was observed in the non-intervention areas for counselling on IFA in Ethiopia and for dietary diversity in Burkina Faso. CONCLUSION: The results can be attributed to the extensive delivery system at community level in Bangladesh and being predominantly facility-based in Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. COVID-19 disruptions (in Burkina Faso and Ethiopia) and indicator choice also had a role in the results.The main takeaways for nutrition programmes are as follows: (a) assessing inequality issues through formative studies during designing, (b) monitoring inequality indicators during implementation, (c) diligently addressing inequality through targeted interventions, setting aside resources and motivating frontline workers to reduce disparities and (d) making inequality analysis a routine part of impact evaluations.

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The fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are rife with inequalities and under-representation that have their roots in childhood. While researchers have focused on gender and race/ethnicity as two key dimensions of inequality, less attention has been paid to wealth. To this end, and drawing from the Social Reasoning Development approach, we examined children's and adolescents' perceptions of STEM ability and access to opportunities as a function of wealth, as well as their desire to rectify such inequalities. Participants (n = 234: early childhood, n = 70, mean age = 6.33, SD = .79; middle childhood, n = 92, mean age = 8.90, SD = .83 and early adolescence, n = 62, mean age = 12.00; SD = 1.16) in the U.K. (64% White British) and U.S. (40% White/European American) read about two characters, one high-wealth and one low-wealth. In early childhood, participants reported that the high-wealth character would have greater STEM ability and were just as likely to invite either character to take part in a STEM opportunity. By middle childhood, participants were more likely to report equal STEM abilities for both characters and to seek to rectify inequalities by inviting the low-wealth character to take part in a STEM opportunity. However, older participants reported that peers would still prefer to invite the high-wealth character. These findings also varied by ethnic group status, with minority status participants rectifying inequalities at a younger age than majority status participants. Together these findings document that children are aware of STEM inequalities based on wealth and, with age, will increasingly seek to rectify these inequalities.

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Background: China has made remarkable achievements in alleviating poverty under its current poverty standards. Despite these immense successes, the challenge of consolidating these achievements remains. In reality, health risks are among the significant factors causing rural households to fall into poverty, and medical insurance is the significant factor mitigating household vulnerability to poverty. Therefore, alleviating or guarding against households falling into poverty is essential. Methods: This paper establishes a multi-equilibrium model that incorporates heterogeneous health risks and medical insurance. Through parameter calibration and value function iteration, numerical solutions are derived. Results: Heterogeneous health risks significantly increase poverty vulnerability and wealth inequality in rural households. Medical insurance, through its investment incentives and loss compensation effects, efficiently mitigates these issues, especially benefiting those in poorer health. Furthermore, the dual-slanted compensation policy efficiently mitigates the adverse effects of "reverse redistribution." Conclusion: Medical insurance effectively mitigates household vulnerability to poverty and wealth inequality. Government departments must establish health records for residents. By recognizing variations in health conditions, these departments can provide households with poorer health conditions with a higher medical expense compensation ratio. In addition, the government should further focus medical expense reimbursements toward households on the cusp of escaping poverty to ensure that they are not plunged back (or further) into poverty due to medical expenses.

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BACKGROUND: Aggregate trends can be useful for summarizing large amounts of information, but this can obscure important distributional aspects. Some population subgroups can be worse off even as averages climb, for example. Distributional information can identify health inequalities, which is essential to understanding their drivers and possible remedies. METHODS: Using publicly available Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 41 sub-Saharan African countries from 1986 to 2019, we analyzed changes in coverage for eight key maternal and child health indicators: first dose of measles vaccine (MCV1); Diphtheria-Pertussis-Tetanus (DPT) first dose (DPT1); DPT third dose (DPT3); care-seeking for diarrhea, acute respiratory infections (ARI), or fever; skilled birth attendance (SBA); and having four antenatal care (ANC) visits. To evaluate whether coverage diverged or converged over time across the wealth gradient, we computed several dispersion metrics including the coefficient of variation across wealth quintiles. Slopes and 5-year moving averages were computed to identify overall long-term trends. RESULTS: Average coverage increased for all quintiles and indicators, although the range and the speed at which they increased varied widely. There were small changes in the wealth-related gap for SBA, ANC, and fever. The wealth-related gap of vaccination-related indicators (DPT1, DPT3, MCV1) decreased over time. Compared to 2017, the wealth-gap between richest and poorest quintiles in 1995 was 7 percentage points larger for ANC and 17 percentage points larger for measles vaccination. CONCLUSIONS: Maternal and child health indicators show progress, but the distributional effects show differential evolutions in inequalities. Several reasons may explain why countries had smaller wealth-related gap trends in vaccination-related indicators compared to others. In addition to service delivery differences, we hypothesize that the allocation of development assistance for health, the prioritization of vaccine-preventable diseases on the global agenda, and indirect effects of structural adjustment programs on health system-related indicators might have played a role.

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Increasing wealth inequality is a significant global issue that demands attention. While the distribution of wealth varies across countries based on their economic stages, there is a universal trend observed in the distribution function. Typically, regions with lower wealth values exhibit an exponential distribution, while regions with higher wealth values demonstrate a power-law distribution. In this review, we introduce measures that effectively capture wealth inequality and examine wealth distribution functions within the wealth exchange model. Drawing inspiration from the field of econophysics, wealth exchange resulting from economic activities is likened to a kinetic model, where molecules collide and exchange energy. Within this framework, two agents exchange a specific amount of wealth. As we delve into the analysis, we investigate the impact of various factors such as tax collection, debt allowance, and savings on the wealth distribution function when wealth is exchanged. These factors play a crucial role in shaping the dynamics of wealth distribution.

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Wealth inequality in anthropometric failure is a persistent concern for policymakers in India. This necessitates a comprehensive analysis and identification of various risk factors that can explain the poor-rich gap in anthropometric failure among children in India. We analyze the fifth and fourth rounds of the Indian National Family Health Survey collected from June 2019 to April 2021 and January 2015 to December 2016, respectively. Two samples of children aged 0-59 and 6-23 months old with singleton birth, alive at the time of the survey with non-pregnant mothers, and with valid data on stunting, severe stunting, underweight, severely underweight, wasting, and severe wasting are included in the analytical samples from both rounds. We estimate the wealth gradients and distribution of wealth among children with anthropometric failure. Wealth gap in anthropometric failure is identified using logistic regression analysis. The contribution of risk factors in explaining the poor-rich gap in AF is estimated by the multivariate decomposition analysis. We observe a negative wealth gradient for each measure of anthropometric failure. Wealth distributions indicate that at least 60% of the population burden of anthropometric failure is among the poor and poorest wealth groups. Even among children with similar modifiable risk factors, children from poor and poorest backgrounds have a higher prevalence of anthropometric failure compared to children from the richest backgrounds. Maternal BMI, exposure to mass media, and access to sanitary facility are the most significant risk factors that explain the poor-rich gap in anthropometric failure. This evidence suggests that the burden of anthropometric failure and its risk factors are unevenly distributed in India. The policy interventions focusing on maternal and child health, implemented with a targeted approach prioritizing the vulnerable groups, can only partially bridge the poor-rich gap in anthropometric failure. The role of anti-poverty programs and growth is essential to narrow this gap in anthropometric failure.

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In view of some recent reports on global wealth inequality, where a small number (often a handful) of people own more wealth than 50% of the world's population, we explored if kinetic exchange models of markets could ever capture features where a significant fraction of wealth can concentrate in the hands of a few as the market size N approaches infinity. One existing example of such a kinetic exchange model is the Chakraborti or Yard-Sale model; in the absence of tax redistribution, etc., all wealth ultimately condenses into the hands of a single individual (for any value of N), and the market dynamics stop. With tax redistribution, etc., steady-state dynamics are shown to have remarkable applicability in many cases in our extremely unequal world. We show that another kinetic exchange model (called the Banerjee model) has intriguing intrinsic dynamics, where only ten rich traders or agents possess about 99.98% of the total wealth in the steady state (without any tax, etc., like external manipulation) for any large N value. We will discuss the statistical features of this model using Monte Carlo simulations. We will also demonstrate that if each trader has a non-zero probability f of engaging in random exchanges, then these condensations of wealth (e.g., 100% in the hand of one agent in the Chakraborti model, or about 99.98% in the hands of ten agents in the Banerjee model) disappear in the large N limit. Moreover, due to the built-in possibility of random exchange dynamics in the earlier proposed Goswami-Sen model, where the exchange probability decreases with the inverse power of the wealth difference between trading pairs, one does not see any wealth condensation phenomena. In this paper, we explore these aspects of statistics of these intriguing models.

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Persistent differences in wealth and power among prehispanic Pueblo societies are visible from the late AD 800s through the late 1200s, after which large portions of the northern US Southwest were depopulated. In this paper we measure these differences in wealth using Gini coefficients based on house size, and show that high Ginis (large wealth differences) are positively related to persistence in settlements and inversely related to an annual measure of the size of the unoccupied dry-farming niche. We argue that wealth inequality in this record is due first to processes inherent in village life which have internally different distributions of the most productive maize fields, exacerbated by the dynamics of systems of balanced reciprocity; and second to decreasing ability to escape village life owing to shrinking availability of unoccupied places within the maize dry-farming niche as villages get enmeshed in regional systems of tribute or taxation. We embed this analytical reconstruction in the model of an 'Abrupt imposition of Malthusian equilibrium in a natural-fertility, agrarian society' proposed by Puleston et al. (Puleston C, Tuljapurkar S, Winterhalder B. 2014 PLoS ONE 9, e87541 (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0087541)), but show that the transition to Malthusian dynamics in this area is not abrupt but extends over centuries This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolutionary ecology of inequality'.

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Although prior research has provided insights into the association between country-level factors and health inequalities, key research gaps remain. First, most previous studies examine subjective rather than objective health measures. Second, the wealth dimension in health inequalities is understudied. Third, a handful of studies explicitly focus on older adults. To bridge these research gaps, this study measures wealth-related inequalities in physical and cognitive impairments and examines the extent to which welfare states moderate wealth inequalities in physical and cognitive impairments among older people across Japan and Europe. We utilized harmonized data on non-institutionalized individuals aged 50-75 from the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) (N = 31,969 for physical impairments and 31,348 for cognitive impairments). Our multilevel linear regression analyses examined whether national public health spending and healthcare access resources explained cross-country differences in wealth inequalities in physical and cognitive impairments. We applied a concentration index to quantify the degree of wealth inequalities in impairments. The findings indicate that inequalities in both impairment outcomes favored wealthier individuals in all countries, but the magnitude of inequality varied by country. Furthermore, a higher share of public health spending, lower out-of-pocket expenditure, and higher investment in healthcare resources were associated with lower wealth inequalities, especially for physical impairments. Our findings suggest that different health interventions and policies may be needed to mitigate specific impairment inequalities.

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Background and objectives: There is significant evidence from large-scale, industrial and post-industrial societies that greater income and wealth inequality is negatively associated with both population health and increasing health inequalities. However, whether such relationships are inevitable and should be expected to impact the health of small-scale societies as they become more market-integrated is less clear. Methodology: Here, using mixed-effect models, we explore the relationship between health, wealth, wealth inequality and health inequalities in a small-scale foraging population from the Philippines, the Agta. Results: Across 11 camps, we find small to moderate degrees of wealth inequality (maximal Gini Coefficient 0.44) which is highest in the most permanent camps, where individuals engage more heavily in the formal market. However, in both adults (n = 161) and children (n = 215), we find little evidence that either wealth or wealth inequality associates with ill health, except for one measure of nutritional condition-red blood cell count. Conclusions and implications: We interpret these results in the light of high levels of cooperation among the Agta which may buffer against the detrimental effects of wealth inequality documented in industrial and post-industrial societies. We observe little intergenerational wealth transmission, highlighting the fluid nature of wealth, and thus wealth inequality, particularly in mobile communities. The deterioration of nutritional status, as indicated by red blood cell counts, requires further investigation before concluding the Agta's extensive cooperation networks may be beginning to breakdown in the face of increasing inequality.

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This paper investigates both the linear and nonlinear effects of climate risk shocks on wealth inequality in the UK using the local projections (LPs) method, based on high-frequency, i.e., monthly data. The linear results show that climate risk shocks lead to an increase in wealth inequality in the longer term. The nonlinear results present some evidence of heterogeneous responses of wealth inequality to climate risk variable shocks between high- and low-climate risk regimes. The findings highlight the disproportionate increased burden of climate change on households that are already experiencing poverty, particularly households in high-climate risk areas. As such, measures to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change need to be tailored so as not to overburden the poor.

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Background: The socio-environmental aspects of southern Assam reflect a general pattern of backwardness. Moreover, child healthcare resources in the region are inadequately used, leading to low vaccination coverage. Given this background, this paper attempted to comprehend wealth-based inequality in full vaccination in rural areas of southern Assam. Methodology: Based on a multistage cluster sampling approach, 360 children of 12-23 months were selected from the study area. To identify the predictors of a child, a non-linear model was estimated by using the generalized linear model (GLM) approach followed by Erreygers decomposition technique to quantify the wealth inequality in the obtained predictors in explaining the disparity in full vaccination. Result: The Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination recorded the highest vaccination coverage, at nearly 90% and the lowest was observed for the measles vaccine, around 61 percent. Slightly more than half of the eligible children (54 percent) were vaccinated against all the Universal Immunization Programme (UIP)-recommended vaccines. The decomposition analysis revealed that the occupation of the child's father, maternal age, birth order of the child, and health-seeking behavior such as antenatal care (ANC) were the prime factors related to inequality in full vaccination in the region. Conclusion: Vaccination coverage in the region has improved over time, however, full vaccination is concentrated towards the economically advantaged section of the society in rural southern Assam. Targeted, context-specific, and expanded government initiatives could aid in addressing the overall wealth-related full vaccination inequalities in the valley.

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This study was designed to explore the relationship between Alzheimer's disease (AD) rates and socioeconomic conditions in 120 countries. We used mixed effect models to investigate the relationship between the rates of AD and socioeconomic data. This study is among the first studies to put forward statistical evidence of a significant association between AD and other dementias among the elderly and socioeconomic inequality. These findings could help to inform the policies to be designed to improve the quality of interventions for AD.

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Background: Socioeconomic inequality in access to and use of health services and social care provided near the end of life, or end-of-life care (EOLC), is not well understood in many countries. We examined wealth inequality in EOLC-hospital, nursing home, and hospice use and receipt of formal and informal caregiving-in 22 countries in Europe, Asia (South Korea), and North America (United States, Mexico). Methods: We used harmonized data from nationally representative studies of people aged 50 and older that collected information on healthcare utilisation and caregiving receipt in the time preceding death. We categorized countries according to their level of public long-term care (LTC) spending and examined EOLC prevalence across countries. We used logistic regression models to estimate wealth inequality in each type of EOLC. Findings: In the USA the least wealthy had more hospital (OR 1.30, p = 0.008) and nursing home/care use (OR 1.88, p < 0.001). In South Korea the least wealthy had more nursing home/care use (OR 2.24, p = 0.003). The least wealthy in high LTC Europe had less hospice use (OR 0.56, p = 0.003). The least wealthy were also less likely to be hospitalized in European countries with low LTC spending (OR 0.81, p = 0.04), but more likely to receive informal caregiving (OR 1.25, p = 0.033). Formal care was more common among the least wealthy in high LTC Europe (OR 1.57, p = 0.002), the USA (OR 1.42, p < 0.001) and South Korea (OR 1.69, p = 0.028), but less common among the least wealthy in Mexico (OR 0.17, p < 0.001). Interpretation: Wealth inequality in EOLC exists across countries and reflects differences in the organization, financing, and delivery of care in different countries. The findings highlight the need to consider equity in current and future plans to improve EOLC access. Funding: United States National Institute on Aging Grant R01AG030153.

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Introduction: This article delves into the broad social and economic impacts of wealth inequality, specifically focusing on its effects on happiness, as analyzed using micro survey data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). Methods: This article employs the panel OLS regression method with time and province fixed effects for the main result and heterogeneity analysis, then uses the mediating effect and moderating effect test for the mechanisms. Results and discussion: The article presents several key findings: 1. Impact of Wealth Inequality on Happiness. The study confirms that wealth inequality significantly reduces happiness, a conclusion reinforced by a range of consistency tests and endogeneity checks. 2. Heterogeneity Analysis. Three areas of heterogeneity are examined: Hukou status, education level, and family members' average income. The results indicate that the happiness of families with a family head holding an urban Hukou, higher education, or a higher per-member income level is less affected by wealth inequality. 3. Mechanisms Affecting Happiness. At the micro-level, the article identifies two mediating pathways-health and marital status-through which wealth inequality negatively influences happiness. At the macro-level, it is found that social security expenditure and economic development can moderate these effects and enhance subjective happiness under the same conditions of wealth inequality. The contributions of this study are specific as: 1. This study addresses some of the existing gaps in the research regarding the relationship between wealth inequality and happiness. 2. The article utilizes relative deprivation as a measure of wealth inequality, considered a more apt metric for studying happiness compared to absolute inequality. 3. This research offers insights into the mechanisms behind the observed effects, considering both micro-level (individual and family) and macro-level (societal and economic) factors.

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At birth, individual has a health capital that depends on family, environmental and personal characteristics which depreciates over time requiring investment. It's in this sense that this article aims to analyze the effect of wealth inequality on infant and child mortality in Togo. This effect is accessed by a semi-parametric proportional hazard duration model of Cox. According to the model estimation which is based on data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) carried out in Togo in 2017, the results obtained show in one hand that coming from a less wealthy household increases the risk of death for children. On other hand, the results show that the possession of a source of drinking water, the possession of health insurance by the mother, and the mastery of the use of new information technologies and communication reduce the risk of infant and child mortality. In view of these results, policies to reduce wealth inequalities could help reduce the risk of infant and child mortality in proportions ranging from 0.075 to 0.264.

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A vast literature documents that wealth inequality has risen throughout advanced democracies, especially the accumulation of wealth among the rich. Yet, instead of increasing wealth redistribution, governments have done the seemingly opposite. Key to understanding why democratic governments do not increase wealth redistribution in times of rising inequalities is to shed light on the public's preferences. In this paper, we map the public's redistributive preferences in fourteen countries based on new survey data. We show that traditional socioeconomic cleavages in preferences for wealth redistribution are undermined by diverging mobility expectations. People who expect to climb up the wealth distribution, mostly lower wealth groups, are less supportive of redistribution than people with high stakes of major wealth losses, mainly upper wealth groups. We show that future expectations among the rich and the poor have a highly moderating role for the class conflict over wealth redistribution. Moreover, the middle class, the decisive group in democracies, is highly unresponsive to future prospects. The findings suggest that the middle class does not have much to lose or to win, and therefore, wealth redistribution is of low salience among this group.

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This paper examines wealth accumulation among couple-headed households and investigates changes in within-household inequality over time and across couple statuses. Going beyond previous research that mostly studies wealth accumulation within marriages by comparing married with unmarried individuals, we consider the legal statuses of couples (cohabitation, civil union, and marriage) and property regimes (community and separate property). We apply multivariate regression analysis to high-quality longitudinal data from the French wealth survey (2015-2018) and find no differences in net worth accumulation between couples' legal statuses when property regimes are not accounted for. However, couples with a separate property regime accumulate more wealth than couples with a community property regime, and married couples with a separate property regime drive this association. Our results show that the gender wealth gap is larger for couples with a separate property regime, but it is partially compensated by accumulated wealth. Our results highlight the importance of legal statuses and property regimes in explaining the dynamics of between- and within-household inequality in France, specifically within a context of increasingly diversified marital trajectories. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10680-022-09632-5.

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Aim: The Income Inequality Hypothesis asserts that income inequality causes negative health burdens within wealthy nations. We aimed to test the hypothesis in Norway, examining the relationship between both income and wealth inequality, net of individual economic resources, and individual all-cause mortality. To this day, little is known about the association between wealth inequality and mortality. In Norway, wealth is far more unequally distributed than income and can be a more prevalent indicator of long-term financial security. Methods: We estimated discrete-time event history models from Norwegian register data, covering all Norwegian-born men and women aged 25-84 years during the period 1993-2013. We include fixed effects at the municipal level, adjusting for time-invariant characteristics in the local area. Our data contain approximately 58.5 million person-year observations after sample restrictions. Results: Overall, increased income and wealth inequality (measured using Gini coefficients of individuals' pensionable income and net worth) is not associated with higher mortality risk in Norway. With a one percentage point increase in income inequality, odds ratio (OR) for mortality was estimated at 0.998 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.996-1.001) for men and 1.002 (95% CI 0.999-1.006) for women. Corresponding OR from increased wealth inequality was 0.998 (95% CI 0.997-1.000) for men and 0.999 (95% CI 0.998-1.001) for women. Conclusions: Our results raise further doubts about the existence of a contextual effect of economic inequality on health, at least in a Nordic setting. Extensive health policies, relatively generous benefits and high levels of trust could potentially function as a buffer against negative health consequences of increased economic inequality in Norway.