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1. Divided infrastructure: legal exclusion and water inequality in an urban slum in Mumbai, India

   https://doi.org/10.1177/09562478221121737  

   Lubeck-Schricker, Maya; Patil-Deshmukh, Anita; Murthy, Sharmila L; Chaubey, Munni Devi; Boomkar, Baliram; Shaikh, Nizamuddin; Shitole, Tejal; Eliasziw, Misha; Subbaraman, Ramnath (April 2023, Environment and Urbanization)

   Inadequate water access is central to the experience of urban inequality across low- and middle-income countries and leads to adverse health and social outcomes. Previous literature on water inequality in Mumbai, India’s second-largest city, offers diverse explanations for water disparities between and within slums. This study provides new insights on water disparities in Mumbai’s slums by evaluating the influence of legal status on water access. We analysed data from 593 households in Mandala, a slum with legally recognized (notified) and unrecognized (non-notified) neighbourhoods. Households in a non-notified neighbourhood suffered relative disadvantages in water infrastructure, accessibility, reliability and spending. Non-notified households also used significantly fewer litres per capita per day of water, even after controlling for religion and socioeconomic status. Findings suggest that legal exclusion may be a central driver of water inequality. Extending legal recognition to excluded slum settlements, neighbourhoods and households could be a powerful intervention for reducing urban water inequality. 

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2. Frontier workers and the seedbeds of inequality and prosperity

   https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbad018  

   Connor, Dylan_Shane; Kemeny, Tom; Storper, Michael (August 2023, Journal of Economic Geography)

   Abstract This article examines the role of work at the cutting of technological change—frontier work—as a driver of prosperity and spatial income inequality. Using new methods and data, we analyze the geography and incomes of frontier workers from 1880 to 2019. Initially, frontier work is concentrated in a set of ‘seedbed’ locations, contributing to rising spatial inequality through powerful localized wage premiums. As technologies mature, the economic distinctiveness of frontier work diminishes, as ultimately happened to cities like Manchester and Detroit. Our work uncovers a plausible general origin story of the unfolding of spatial income inequality. 

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3. Changes in Social Network Structure in Response to Exposure to Formal Credit Markets

   https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdad065  

   Banerjee, Abhijit; Breza, Emily; Chandrasekhar, Arun G.; Duflo, Esther; Jackson, Matthew O.; Kinnan, Cynthia (June 2023, Review of Economic Studies)

   Abstract We show that the entry of formal financial institutions can have far-reaching and long-lasting impacts on informal lending and social networks more generally. We first study the introduction of microfinance in 75 villages in Karnataka, India, 43 of which were exposed to microfinance. Using difference-in-differences, we show that networks shrank more in exposed villages. Moreover, links between households that were both unlikely to borrow from microfinance were at least as likely to disappear as links involving likely borrowers. We replicate these surprising findings in the context of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) in Hyderabad, where a microfinance institution randomly selected 52 of 104 neighbourhoods to enter first. Four years after all neighbourhoods were treated, households in early-entry neighbourhoods had credit access longer and had larger loans. We again find fewer social relationships between households in these neighbourhoods, even among those ex-ante unlikely to borrow. Because the results suggest global spillovers, atypical in usual models of network formation, we develop a new dynamic model of network formation that emphasizes chance meetings, where efforts to socialize generate a global network-level externality. Finally, we analyse informal borrowing and the sensitivity of consumption to income fluctuations. Households unlikely to take up microcredit suffer the greatest loss of informal borrowing and risk sharing, underscoring the global nature of the externality. 

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4. Measuring social equity in urban energy use and interventions using fine-scale data

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023554118  

   Tong, Kangkang; Ramaswami, Anu; Xu, Corey; Feiock, Richard; Schmitz, Patrick; Ohlsen, Michael (June 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   null (Ed.)

   Cities seek nuanced understanding of intraurban inequality in energy use, addressing both income and race, to inform equitable investment in climate actions. However, nationwide energy consumption surveys are limited (<6,000 samples in the United States), and utility-provided data are highly aggregated. Limited prior analyses suggest disparity in energy use intensity (EUI) by income is ∼25%, while racial disparities are not quantified nor unpacked from income. This paper, using new empirical fine spatial scale data covering all 200,000 households in two US cities, along with separating temperature-sensitive EUI, reveals intraurban EUI disparities up to a factor of five greater than previously known. We find 1) annual EUI disparity ratios of 1.27 and 1.66, comparing lowest- versus highest-income block groups (i.e., 27 and 66% higher), while previous literature indicated only ∼25% difference; 2) a racial effect distinct from income, wherein non-White block groups (highest quintile non-White percentage) in the lowest-income stratum reported up to a further ∼40% higher annual EUI than less diverse block groups, providing an empirical estimate of racial disparities; 3) separating temperature-sensitive EUI unmasked larger disparities, with heating–cooling electricity EUI of lowest-income block groups up to 2.67 times (167% greater) that of highest income, and high racial disparity within lowest-income strata wherein high non-White (>75%) population block groups report EUI up to 2.56 times (156% larger) that of majority White block groups; and 4) spatial scales of data aggregation impact inequality measures. Quadrant analyses are developed to guide spatial prioritization of energy investment for carbon mitigation and equity. These methods are potentially translatable to other cities and utilities. 

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5. Rising between-workplace inequalities in high-income countries

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1918249117  

   Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald; Rainey, Anthony; Avent-Holt, Dustin; Bandelj, Nina; Boza, István; Cort, David; Godechot, Olivier; Hajdu, Gergely; Hällsten, Martin; Henriksen, Lasse Folke; et al (April 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   It is well documented that earnings inequalities have risen in many high-income countries. Less clear are the linkages between rising income inequality and workplace dynamics, how within- and between-workplace inequality varies across countries, and to what extent these inequalities are moderated by national labor market institutions. In order to describe changes in the initial between- and within-firm market income distribution we analyze administrative records for 2,000,000,000+ job years nested within 50,000,000+ workplace years for 14 high-income countries in North America, Scandinavia, Continental and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. We find that countries vary a great deal in their levels and trends in earnings inequality but that the between-workplace share of wage inequality is growing in almost all countries examined and is in no country declining. We also find that earnings inequalities and the share of between-workplace inequalities are lower and grew less strongly in countries with stronger institutional employment protections and rose faster when these labor market protections weakened. Our findings suggest that firm-level restructuring and increasing wage inequalities between workplaces are more central contributors to rising income inequality than previously recognized. 

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