Understanding income inequality using political ecology as a method of enquiry
Student name: Ms Poorva Bansal
Guide: Dr Seema Sangita
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: TERI School of Advanced Studies
Abstract: Income inequality has been seen as an important measure to gauge the well- being of the people residing in a region or people indirectly affected by that region. Many factors influence the trickling down of incomes or wealth among all kinds of people. The factors may be economical or social in nature. Economically important variables can be education, trade and the gross domestic product of the nation etc. Social variables may be the social position of the nation, cultural arenas etc. Environmental aspect may also construe a vital determinant of such an income inequality. Such a kind of establishment helps in understanding the significance of inequality in the access to natural resources as an important explanation of increasing income inequality all over the globe.
The paper here aims at leveling a relationship between the social conflicts on environmental issues termed as ecological distribution conflicts, and the income inequality, denoted by GINI index in our case using cross country data for the time period 1970-2015. The analysis is done by inculcating both country and time fixed effects in a panel econometric analysis. Further, we aim at listing the possible factors like language and ethnic diversity which explain the occurrence of these ecological conflicts. Conflicts seem to show a positive effect on the income inequality i.e. higher conflicts regarding natural resources lead in higher inequality in incomes and wealth across individuals of a nation. The instruments used to explain the occurrence of environmental conflicts which are diversity indices of language and ethnic groups pretty much explain that higher diversity will cause higher conflicts on access to natural resources.
Keywords: ecological conflicts, GINI, diversity, trade, inequality
