Employment, Equity and Growth
Principal investigator: Professor Brian Nolan
Funded by: Resolution Foundation, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School
Start date: 2014
End date: 2018 (work ongoing)
Project outline
This research programme was established in 2014 as a partnership between the Department of Social Policy and Intervention and the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School supported by the Resolution Foundation. From then to 2018 it focused on why current economic growth models have been failing middle and lower income households in many rich countries and what is required for better, fairer growth.
The programme explored what drives improvements in ordinary living standards across OECD countries, how distinctive Britain's recent experience in terms of inequality and living standards has been, the impact of labour market changes linked with technology and globalisation, how pre-distribution of market income and redistribution via taxes and transfers could deliver more effectively for middle and below households, long-term/intergenerational threats from increasing inequality and stagnating living standards and how can these can be averted, and what growth models have succeeded in securing rising prosperity for middle and below households.
The core research team comprised Andrea Geraci, Marii Paskov, Max Roser, and Stefan Thewissen. The key findings were brought together in two volumes published by Oxford University Press in 2018 edited by Brian Nolan: Inequality and Inclusive Growth in Rich Countries: Shared Challenges and Contrasting Fortunes and Generating Prosperity for Working Families in Rich Countries.
These bring out that, while rich countries have faced common challenges in an era of globalization and rapid technological change, some sets of institutions and policy responses proved more capable than others in still underpinning widely-share improvements in incomes and living standards. The United States, often taken as a point of reference in current debates, is in many respects distinctive rather than typical, making it hazardous to draw general overarching conclusions from its experience and highlighting the value of the comparative perspective provided by this programme.
The research programme on these topics continued via the Inequality and Prosperity programme supported by Citi also directed by Brian Nolan.
Other staff include: Dr. Andrea Geraci, Dr. Craig Holmes, Dr. Marii Paskov, Dr. Max Roser, and Dr. Stefan Thewissen.
Nolan, B. ed. (2018). Generating Prosperity for Working Families in Rich Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nolan, B. ed. (2018). Inequality and Inclusive Growth in Rich Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alvaredo, F., A.B. Atkinson, and S. Morelli (2018) Top wealth shares in the UK over more than a century. Journal of Public Economics, 162: 26-47.
Nolan, B., M. Roser and S. Thewissen (2018). ‘GDP Per Capita Versus Median Household Income: What Gives Rise to the Divergence Over Time and How Does This Vary Across OECD Countries?', Review of Income and Wealth.
Thewissen, S., L. Kenworthy, B. Nolan, M. Roser and T. Smeeding (2018). ‘Rising Income Inequality and Living Standards in OECD Countries: How Does the Middle Fare?', Journal of Income Distribution, 6(2): 1-23.
Atkinson, A.B., Leventi, C. Nolan, B., Sutherland, H. and Tasseva, I. (2017). ‘Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study', Journal of Economic Inequality, 15(4): 303–323.
Cantillon, B., Y. Chzhen, S. Handa, S. and B. Nolan, eds. (2017). Children of Austerity: The Impact of the Great Recession on Child Poverty in Rich Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nolan, B. and C.T. Whelan, (2017). 'Atkinson's Inequality: What Can Be Done?'. Revue Francaise de Sociologie, 53 (2), 181-189.
Paskov, M., K. Gërxhani, H. van de Werfhorst,. (2017). ‘Giving up on the Joneses? The relationship between income inequality and status-seeking'. European Sociological Review.
Whelan, C. T., Nolan, B. and Maitre, B. (2017). 'Polarization or Squeezed Middle in the Great Recession? A Comparative European Analysis of the Distribution of Economic Stress'. Social Indicators Research, 133(1): 163–184.
Alvaredo, F., A.B Atkinson and S. Morelli (2016). The challenge of measuring UK wealth inequality in the 2000s, Fiscal Studies. 37(1): 13-33.
Aaberge, R., A.B. Atkinson and H. Sigstad (2016). “Income poverty, affluence and polarisation viewed from the median”, in Monitoring Social Europe, edited by A B Atkinson, A-C Guio and E Marlier, Eurostat, Luxembourg.
Horemans, J., I. Marx and B. Nolan (2016). ‘Hanging in, but only just: part-time employment and in-work poverty throughout the crisis', IZA Journal of European Labor Studies 20165:5; DOI: 10.1186/s40174-016-0053-6.
Paskov, M., Gërxhani, K. & van de Werfhorst, H. G., (2016). ‘Giving up on the Joneses? The relationship between income inequality and status-seeking', European Sociological Review. 33, 1, p. 112-123.
Richards, L. and M. Paskov (2016). ‘Social class, employment status and inequality in psychological well-being in the UK: cross-sectional and fixed effects analyses over two decades'. Social Science & Medicine, 169, 45-53.
Whelan, C. T., B. Nolan and B. Maître (2016). 'The Great Recession and the changing intergenerational distribution of economic stress across income classes in Ireland: A comparative perspective'. Irish Journal of Sociology, DOI: 10.1177/0791603516657346.