Unemployment and Income Distribution: Time-Series Evidence from Sweden
利用瑞典时间序列数据，研究失业率变化如何影响个人收入分配，发现失业增加可能通过不同渠道对收入不平等产生复杂影响。
For a long time, Swedish politicians have been devoted to keeping unemployment at low levels. The main reason for this devotion is probably the belief that higher unemployment increases inequality of income and welfare. This is a reasonable belief since unemployment risks are highest among people with low earnings capacity, even when they have a job. By means of micro data it is easy to verify a marked low-income profile of unemployment. Further, the Swedish unemployment insurance system replaces only about 70 per cent of foregone income and quite many unemployed do not qualify for any benefits; see Bjorklund and Holmlund (1991). Increases in unemployment, however, are associated with many changes in the economy with complex consequences for the personal distribution of income. In addition to the income losses suffered by those who become unemployed, higher unemployment also affects the factor shares of income. The profit share typically declines during recessions and because upper-income groups receive a relatively high proportion of their income from capital income, a countervailing mechanism is involved. Changes in unemployment also affect inflation which, in turn, might influence the personal distribution of income. The distributional effects of inflation are an open question. This note makes an investigation into the relationship between unemployment and the personal distribution of income using Swedish time-series data. The method was first used on U.S. data by Blinder and