摘要:

Income inequality in Canada has not changed significantly over the past two decades, though this apparent stability may be surprising in view of the major economic and social changes that occurred over this period. The share of income going to the bottom quintile remains at about four percent while the top quintile continues to receive about 40 percent of income.Social trends such as lower fertility rates have coincided with increased female labour force participation to increase family incomes in the middle and upper‐middle parts of the income spectrum. At the same time, the trend for baby boom children to establish their own separate households, and increased divorce and separation rates, have tended to create more small family units with low incomes. These social trends, in isolation of other factors, would have increased income inequality.However, economic factors have apparently offset these tendencies. Since employment income is concentrated in the middle and upper‐middle ranges, the relative fall in this source of income over the past two decades tended to be equalizing. Similarly, the fact that a large part of total investment income accrues to the elderly who have below average income implies that the trend towards high interest rates has been equalizing. Finally, the social “safety nets” put in place in the mid‐1960s and early 1970s have grown in relative importance, and this too has had an equalizing impact on the distribution of income.Given the overall stability in income inequality, the equalizing tendencies of economic factors such as high interest rates and relatively slow economic growth, with the large automatic responsiveness of governments' social safety net programs, appear to have just about exactly offset the disequalizing social factors of “baby boomers” leaving home, lower fertility, higher divorce and separation rates, and higher female labour force

ISSN:0034-6586    

DOI:10.1111/j.1475-4991.1986.tb00545.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

National accounts are a powerful means of coordinating different statistical systems. The better their classifications are adapted to the basic statistics or the information blocks one wishes to use, the better the national accounts play their part. This statement explains why, taking the opportunity of revising the whole system, French national accountants tried to improve the concordance between financial operation tables and monetary statistics. Other reasons leading to this attempt can be found in the dissatisfaction of users having to face different and inconsistent financial information such as the monetary statistics on one hand and the financial aggregates of the national accounts on the other; and even more reasons appear in the organizational field since those two statistical systems are issued by two neighbour services of the Banque de France, often depending on the same sources. Further, many propitious factors are converging at the same time: the French financial system is undergoing profound transformations originating as much in the behaviour of economic agents as in the law, and the statistical operations have to adapt to these changes. The national accounts will in the near future include balance sheets in which financial asset holdings are directly comparable to the money supply aggregates. In its first part our paper sets forth the detailed reasons for our attempts, the conditions in which it took place and the present results. We have reached a much better degree of consistency between the two systems, even if the final scheme has not yet been adopted in either the monetary field or in the field of national accounts. But an important question remains open about the durability of the harmonization: we think that it could be relatively uncertain because of the differences in the goals pursued by the two systems and the constraints which they face. That is why in the second part of the paper we tried to review the way such a pragmatic undertaking as ours could call into question the way in which financial operations are described in the system of national accounts. If one agrees with the present boundary between the real and the financial sphere, the articulation must remain somewhat elementary. But if one wants to revise the usual so‐called dichotomy between financial and non financial phenomena, we think that a complete rebuilding of the conceptual framework of the accounts has to be done; this would necessitate a considerable amount of theoretical and practical wor

ISSN:0034-6586    

DOI:10.1111/j.1475-4991.1986.tb00546.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Household non‐market production is not observed directly and therefore not known. This paper develops a methodological approach to the description of household production functions based on the assumption that household non‐market production and household final consumption (as defined in National Accounts) are interdependent. What households produce and the way they produce depends to a large extent on what they may acquire on the market. Empirical data is provided both by the French National Accounts and Household Surveys.The study presents a nomenclature of household output by type of product derived from the nomenclature of household non‐market productive activities, to which final consumption products as described in the National Accounting nomenclatures are matched. Final consumption commodities are classified according to the role they play in household non‐market productive processes, and subdivided into three categories: “substitute products” which save households from producing similar commodities in the home; “complementary products” which are not produced by households, but serve to produce other goods and services; “pure final consumption products” which are neither produced by households nor serve in any further productive process before being actually consumed in the proper sense of the term.The combination of monetary and non‐monetary indicators provides information on household modes of production and on trends of output over the past 15 years. The method is implemented here for all households, in a global approach. It may, nonetheless, be adapted and serve to study disparities among households stemming from their characteristics, or to estimate the implicit price at which household members value the use of their time; it may also be used to assess the impact of market output on the nature of household non‐market production. National Accounts supply aggregate data on household final consumption, while time budget surveys constitute the main source of information on their activities.The method used in this study consists of matching the official nomenclatures used to structure the two sets of data, each designed to describe different aspects of one and the same economic unit. To be more precise, this study attempts to establish a correspondence between the nomenclature of activities and products (N.A.P.) [1] used in the French National Accounting System and the nomenclature of activities used in the French Time Budget Survey [2]. This matching procedure aims at showing up the substitutability or complementarity effects between household non‐market production and output of the market sector.1The assumption of interdependence between households' final consumption (as defined in National Accounts) and their non‐market production leads to a classification of commodities acquired on the market into three categories: “substitute products”, which the household purchases rather than producing them itself; “complementary products”, which the household uses in order to produce other goods; and finally, “pure final consumption products”, which households do not produce (or no longer produce) and which they neither transform no

ISSN:0034-6586    

DOI:10.1111/j.1475-4991.1986.tb00547.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This paper is divided into two main sections. The first part summarises briefly the main points which have arisen in the lengthy debate over the treatment of banking intermediaries in the national accounts. The discussion emphasises the method adopted in the early Australian accounts when banks were treated in the same way as the general government. It is argued that this method is simpler and provides a more realistic account of the functions of banks than the current SNA proposal.The second part of the paper examines the functions of banks in Australia. It uses data of interest and administration cost for separate banking institutions to examine the incidence of bank costs. It is concluded that the costs do not fall on borrowers or lenders but are a charge in providing a communal service in the establishment and maintenance of the financial system.

ISSN:0034-6586    

DOI:10.1111/j.1475-4991.1986.tb00548.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The banking problem in the National Accounts arises because interest rates paid by banks on deposits are generally lower than the rates charged for loans and service charges levied by banks are generally less than the cost of the banking services provided.This paper offers two explanations for such observations: first there is the new neo‐classical theory of private banking and central banking which suggests that they arise because of distorting “taxes” levied by regulating central banks. Second there is the Keynesian theory which accounts for the observations by the fact that the public good services of monetary stabilization supplied directly by the central banks and indirectly by private banks cannot be priced.Both theories account for the empirical observations giving rise to the banking problem. Neither theory lends support to the banking imputation currently carried out in most National Acc

ISSN:0034-6586    

DOI:10.1111/j.1475-4991.1986.tb00549.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This paper focuses on the income patterns among the elderly. The life cycle hypothesis suggests that income and assets will decline after retirement. Data from the 1980 U.S. decennial census confirms that total income declines for succeeding elderly cohorts. The census data, however, shows that income from assets for elderly cohorts increases until the cohort aged 85 years and older. This pattern is similar for different sex‐marital groups. Recent research that has addressed the issue of savings among the elderly is summarized and four possible explanations for the increase in income from assets found in the decennial census are discussed. We conclude by suggesting the implications of this data for the life cycle theory and public polic

ISSN:0034-6586    

DOI:10.1111/j.1475-4991.1986.tb00550.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0034-6586    

DOI:10.1111/j.1475-4991.1986.tb00551.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY