Comprehensive metrological and content analysis of the income inequality research in health field: A bibliometric analysis.

The association between income inequality in a society and the poor health status of its people has attracted the attention of researchers from multiple disciplines. Based on the ISI Web of Science database, bibliometric methods were used to analyze 546 articles related to income inequality research in health field published between 1997 and 2021. We found that the USA contributed most articles, the Harvard Univ was the most influential institution, Social Science & Medicine was the most influential journal, and Kawachi I was the most influential author; the main hotspots included the income inequality, income, health inequality, mortality, socioeconomic factors, concentration index, social capital, self-rated health, income distribution, infant mortality, and population health in 1997-2021; the cardiovascular disease risk factor, social capital income inequality, individual mortality risk, income-related inequalities, understanding income inequalities, income inequality household income, and state income inequality had been the hot research topics in 1997-2003; the self-assessed health, achieving equity, income-related inequalities, oral health, mental health, European panel, occupational class, and cardiovascular diseases had been the hot research topics in 2004-2011; the adolescent emotional problem, South Africa, avoidable mortality, rising inequalities, results from world health survey, working-age adult, spatial aggregation change, prospective study, and mental health-empirical evidence had been the hot research topics in 2012-2021; there were 11 articles with strong transformation potential during 2012-2021. The research results of this paper are helpful to the scientific understanding of the current status of income inequality research in health field.

Environmental regulation benefits for whom? Heterogeneous effects of the intensity of the environmental regulation on employment in China.

As environmental pollution in China has deteriorated in the recent years, intensifying environmental regulation has become a necessity for the Chinese government. But the debate persists among the academic circles and the government over whether a double dividend, reducing pollution emission and boosting employment, of environmental regulations exists. This study differentiates, based on Cobb-Douglas production function, the variance between high- and low-skilled labour and constructs theoretical models to analyse heterogeneous effects of environmental regulation intensity on the employment of labour with varied skills. The model finds that implementing environmental regulation will generate 'compliance cost effect' and 'innovation offset effect'. The compliance cost effect will promote the employment of high-skilled labour while suppressing that of the low-skilled labour. The innovation offset effect, however, will facilitate the employment for both high-skilled and low-skilled labour. Therefore, the employment of high-skilled labour will grow along with the intensification of environmental regulation while that of the low-skilled labour will decline first and then rebound, showcasing a U-shaped curve. The empirical research results based on the provincial dynamic panel data from 2004 to 2018 in China confirm the theoretical analysis. Moreover, we find spatial spillover effects of environmental regulation on employment, with high-skilled labour being more sensitive to changes in environmental regulation. One percentage point increase in environmental regulation in neighbouring regions will cause 0.072% employment decline in high-skilled labour while that of low-skilled labour will only decrease 0.033%. The conclusions of this study verify that dividend in employment growth for both high-skilled and low-skilled labour can be realised along with intensification of environmental regulation, which carries significant guiding implications for policy-making for environmental regulation in China.