ISER’s Stephen Jenkins has been commissioned by the Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti (FRDB) to research the effects of the recent recession on people’s incomes and the gap between the rich and the poor.
The project, Effects of the Great Recession on the Income Distribution: Cross-National Perspectives will assess precisely what has been happening to people’s incomes during the recession, including ascertaining who has lost the most and what is happening to the gap between the richest and poorest households and the poverty rate.
Explaining the background to the project, Stephen Jenkins said:
“The financial crisis of 2008 turned into a major recession that has been met with national and international government interventions. Unemployment rates have gone up, especially among young people, and interest rates have gone down, affecting older people reliant on savings.”
And he emphasised that the project would have an international perspective:
“The recession has affected many countries around the world, but in many different ways, and with different rates of onset and recovery. We will be comparing the experience of OECD countries, including the USA, the UK and several other European countries”.
The research is being co-ordinated by Stephen, together with Andrea Brandolini (Bank of Italy), John
Micklewright (Institute of Education, University of London), and Brian Nolan (University College Dublin) and will lead to a report that will be presented at the XIIIth European Conference of the FRDB, to be held in Bari on September 10, 2011.
The FRDB is a Milan-based foundation that supports and promotes pan-European applied and policy-oriented research on topics such the labour market, immigration, inequality and poverty, pensions and public finances.