The University of British Columbia
Vancouver School of Economics
Economics 317-002: Poverty and Inequality
Professor Nicole M. Fortin
Fall 2019
Mon, Wed 11:00-12:30 Iona 301
Midterm Exam: Monday, October 21st, 11:00am-12:20am, location: Iona 301
Material to review for the Midterm:
The following Lecture notes posted on CANVAS: Overview, History, Inequality Measures (A,
B, and C), Poverty Measurement (A and B), and Wealth Inequality (up to slide 23).
Key concepts: GDP Growth, Within-country Inequality, Between-country Inequality,
Technological Progress, Trend Analysis, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), Extreme Poverty,
High-income countries, Middle-income countries, Low-income countries, Fragile states,
Religious poverty, Charitable giving, Roles of government, Social Welfare Function
Histogram, Density, Cumulative Distribution, Percentiles, Wage Differentials, Growth Incidence
Curve, P-shares, Capital Income, Labour Income, Cumulative Population Share, Cumulative
Income Share, Growth Incidence Curve, Scale Independence, Lorenz Curve, Anonymity
Principle, Pigou–Dalton Transfer Principle, Regressive Transfer, Progressive Transfer, Gini
Coefficient, Kuznets Curve
Absolute vs. Relative vs. Subjective Poverty Line, Persistent Poverty, Poverty line construction
methods: Cost-of-basic-needs method, Food-share method, Food-energy intake method, Head
Count Ratio, Total Poverty Gap, Income Gap Ratio, Foster-Greer-Thorbecke Measure,
Household Composition, Family Equivalence Scales, Poverty across Demographic Groups,
Differences-in-Differences
Wealth, Net Worth, Real Assets, Financial Assets, Pension Wealth, Housing Wealth, DebtIncome Ratio
Readings:
Many students may find the lengthier explanations in the textbook helpful. The relevant sections
are: Wolff, Chap. 2, 3, 4, 5 (except starred sections)
Journal articles (only the indicated passages):
Koyama, Mark. "Walter Scheidel: The great leveler: violence and the history of inequality
from the stone age to the twenty-first century.
Deaton, Angus. "How Inequality Works" pages 1-5 of "What is Inequality", Project
Syndicate, December, 2017.
Fortin, Nicole M. and Thomas Lemieux (2015) “Changes in Wage Inequality in Canada: An
Interprovincial Perspective”, Canadian Journal of Economics, 48 (May 2015): 682-692.
World Inequality Report 2018 Executive Summary - WID.world, pp.1-9
Saez, Emmanuel (2017) Income and Wealth Inequality: Evidence and Policy Implications,
Contemporary Economic Policy 35(1), pp. 7-18.
Toyama, Kentaro The Rise and Fall and Rise (Literally) of the Most Important Curve in
Economics, The Atlantic (April 30, 2012)
Banerjee, Abhijit V., and Esther Duflo (2007) The Economic Lives of the Poor,
Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(1): pp. 141-151.
The Housing Market Crash and Wealth Inequality in the U.S, in the January 2018 NBER
Digest by Jen Deaderick,