Analyzing Inequality and Policy Across OECD Countries

Describing the Data and Analyzing Inequality and Policy

1. Describe the data that you will be analyzing. What is the unit of analysis? What is your sample size?

2. Using 1-2 tables, graphs, and your knowledge of descriptive statistics, provide a discussion of inequality and policy across countries based on the following variables: welfare regime (regime), government social spending (spend.gdp), income inequality (ineq20), and post-tax poverty rate (post.tax.pov). Summarize the variables using the appropriate measures of central tendency anddispersion. Make sure to discuss the units of the variables and what they measure. Overall, what do these descriptive statistics tell us about OECD countries?

3. Many researchers argue that European Union (EU) member countries spend a greater percentage of their GDP on social services than other European countries not belonging to the EU. Is social spending, as measured by spending as a percentage of GDP, higher in EU countries? Create a boxplot to visualize the relationship between the variables. Then use hypothesis testing to evaluate the significance of this association. Is this relationship significant at the 0.05

level? Write a short paragraph interpreting the results of your analysis and the relationship between these variables. Variables - spend.gdp, eu

4. Most people would expect government spending on healthcare to improve health outcomes, such as life expectancy. Is this expectation accurate? Does the average life expectancy in a country differ by the amount a government spends on healthcare? Is life expectancy the same across high, middle, and low health spending OECD countries? Is this relationship significant at the 0.05 level? Use a boxplot and an ANOVA test to determine whether life expectancy

varies by healthcare spending. Write a short paragraph interpreting the results of your analysis

and the relationship between these variables. Variables - life, health.spend

5. According to previous studies, inequality is associated with poorer health outcomes across countries. Investigate whether a country’s level of inequality influences its infant mortality rate to test if this is true. Is there a relationship between inequality and infant mortality across OECD countries? Is this relationship significant at the 0.05 level? Create a scatterplot to visualize the relationship between the variables. Then conduct a bivariate regression to answer

this question. Compute and report the slope (b), the intercept (a), r, and r2. Write a short paragraph interpreting the results of your analysis and the relationship between these variables. Variables - gini, infant

6. Many researchers argue that higher taxes decrease productivity. Investigate whether a country’s average income tax rate influences its GDP per capita to test if this is true. Is there a relationship between per capita GDP and the average income tax rate across OECD countries?

Is this relationship significant at the 0.05 level? Create a scatterplot to visualize the relationship

between the variables. Then conduct a bivariate regression to answer this question. Compute and report the slope (b), the intercept (a), r, and r 2. Write a short paragraph interpreting the results of your analysis and the relationship between these variables. Variables - gdp.per.cap, inc.tax

7. Summarize your overall results. What does this study show us about health, inequality, government spending, and taxation across OECD countries? How are these factors related?