INCOME INEQUALITY AND PUBLIC POLICY IN GREECE 1962-75

This dissertation investigates the development of inequality trend and the position of income inequality reduction in the list of priorities of Pulbic Policy authorities in Greece.;The investigation in the thesis follows a non-traditional way. It combines personal and functional income inequality measures into one. Then incomes of three groups, pensioners, wage-salary earners and entrepreneurs, are derived using data on wages, profits and transfer payments. The thesis, therefore, covers the total of the population of income-receiving units. The combined measure is then used to estimate inequality trend which is found to be worsening. The conbined measure gives trends in inequality within each group as well as among groups. Pensioners are worse off with no trend in their group inequality. The group of wage-salary earners exhibits the smallest group inequality with a worsening trend. Then inequality is related to consumption and investment to assess the effect of inequality changes on economic activity level through the channels of consumption and investment. It is concluded that changes toward greater equality do not significantly affect consumption or investment. This implies that reduction of inequality is not a high priority target of Public Policy authorities in Greece.