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A new approach to measuring and studying the characteristics of class membership: Examining poverty, inequality and polarization in urban China

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  • Anderson, Gordon
  • Farcomeni, Alessio
  • Pittau, Maria Grazia
  • Zelli, Roberto

Abstract

Classifying agents into subgroups in order to measure the plight of the “poor”, “middle class” or “rich” is common place in economics, unfortunately the definition of class boundaries is contentious and beset with problems. Here a technique based on mixture models is proposed for surmounting these problems by determining the number of classes in a population and estimating the probability that an agent belongs to a particular class. All of the familiar statistics for describing the classes remain available and the possibility of studying the correlates of class membership is raised. As a substantive illustration we analyze household income in Urban China in the last decade of the 20th Century. Four income groups are classified and the progress of those “poor”, “lower middle”, “upper middle” and “rich” classes are related to household and regional characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Anderson, Gordon & Farcomeni, Alessio & Pittau, Maria Grazia & Zelli, Roberto, 2016. "A new approach to measuring and studying the characteristics of class membership: Examining poverty, inequality and polarization in urban China," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 191(2), pages 348-359.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:econom:v:191:y:2016:i:2:p:348-359
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconom.2015.12.006
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    2. Francesco Dotto & Alessio Farcomeni & Maria Grazia Pittau & Roberto Zelli, 2019. "A dynamic inhomogeneous latent state model for measuring material deprivation," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 182(2), pages 495-516, February.
    3. Adam Salifu & Godwin Seyram Agbemavor Horlu, 2022. "Nonfarm employment and mobility of farmers into different income groups: evidence from rural Ghana," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 1-25, January.
    4. Thanasis Stengos & M. Ege Yazgan & Harun Özkan, 2018. "Persistence In Convergence And Club Formation," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(2), pages 119-138, April.
    5. Gordon Anderson & Maria Grazia Pittau & Roberto Zelli & Jasmin Thomas, 2018. "Income Inequality, Cohesiveness and Commonality in the Euro Area: A Semi-Parametric Boundary-Free Analysis," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-20, March.
    6. Gregor Zens, 2018. "Bayesian shrinkage in mixture of experts models: Identifying robust determinants of class membership," Papers 1809.04853, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2019.
    7. Joanne Haddad & Jad Chaaban & Ali Chalak & Hala Ghattas, 2022. "Does Income Class Affect Life Satisfaction? New Evidence from Cross-Country Microdata," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-23, June.
    8. Muhammad Hilmi Abdul Majid & Kamarulzaman Ibrahim & Nurulkamal Masseran, 2023. "Three-Part Composite Pareto Modelling for Income Distribution in Malaysia," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-15, June.
    9. Gregor Zens, 2019. "Bayesian shrinkage in mixture-of-experts models: identifying robust determinants of class membership," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 13(4), pages 1019-1051, December.
    10. Michele Bavaro & Federico Tullio, 2023. "Intergenerational mobility measurement with latent transition matrices," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 21(1), pages 25-45, March.
    11. Gordon Anderson & Tongtong Hao & Maria Grazia Pittau, 2016. "Income Inequality, Family Formation and Generational Mobility in Urban China," Working Papers tecipa-563, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    12. Jin Cao & Chao Cui & Valeriya Dinger & Martin B. Holm & Shulong Kang, 2022. "Identifying the depreciation rate of durables from marginal spending responses," Working Paper 2022/1, Norges Bank.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Poverty frontiers; Mixture models; Class membership; Urban China;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

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