IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apeclt/v15y2007i4p319-321.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Equalizing and disequalizing income components: how to decide which is which

Author

Listed:
  • Cem Baslevent

Abstract

The purpose of this note is to clarify what is meant by the 'proportionate contribution' of an income source to total inequality when the contributions of income sources are examined contemporaneously as opposed to simply measuring the impact of the addition (or exclusion) of an income source. It is shown that the proportionate contribution figures that come out of decomposition by factor components analyses need to be interpreted with caution. They may be misleading if one ignores the fact that those figures depend on the shares of the factors in total income. Another problem could be that the equalizing effect of a relatively more equally distributed factor is overlooked in the interest of treating the factors simultaneously.

Suggested Citation

  • Cem Baslevent, 2007. "Equalizing and disequalizing income components: how to decide which is which," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 319-321.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:15:y:2007:i:4:p:319-321
    DOI: 10.1080/13504850600592549
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&doi=10.1080/13504850600592549&magic=repec&7C&7C8674ECAB8BB840C6AD35DC6213A474B5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13504850600592549?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shorrocks, A F, 1982. "Inequality Decomposition by Factor Components," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 193-211, January.
    2. repec:bla:econom:v:62:y:1995:i:245:p:29-63 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. John C. H. Fei & Gustav Ranis & Shirley W. Y. Kuo, 1978. "Growth and the Family Distribution of Income by Factor Components," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 92(1), pages 17-53.
    4. Silber, Jacques, 1989. "Factor Components, Population Subgroups and the Computation of the Gini Index of Inequality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(1), pages 107-115, February.
    5. Maria Cancian & Deborah Reed, 1998. "Assessing The Effects Of Wives' Earnings On Family Income Inequality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(1), pages 73-79, February.
    6. Lerman, Robert I & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1985. "Income Inequality Effects by Income," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(1), pages 151-156, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stéphane Mussard & Michel Terraza, 2009. "Décompositions des mesures d'inégalité : le cas des coefficients de Gini et d'entropie," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 75(2), pages 151-181.
    2. Stéphane Mussard, 2006. "La décomposition des mesures d’inégalité en sources de revenu : l’indice de Gini et les généralisations," Cahiers de recherche 06-05, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    3. Jurkatis, Simon & Strehl, Wolfgang, 2014. "Gini decompositions and Gini elasticities: On measuring the importance of income sources and population subgroups for income inequality," Discussion Papers 2014/22, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    4. Paul, Satya, 2004. "Income sources effects on inequality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 435-451, February.
    5. Simon Jurkatis, "undated". "Dos and Don'ts of Gini Decompositions," BDPEMS Working Papers 2013003, Berlin School of Economics.
    6. I. Josa & A. Aguado, 2020. "Measuring Unidimensional Inequality: Practical Framework for the Choice of an Appropriate Measure," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 541-570, June.
    7. Peter Lindner, 2015. "Factor decomposition of the wealth distribution in the euro area," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 42(2), pages 291-322, May.
    8. Jonathan Morduch & Terry Sicular, 2002. "Rethinking Inequality Decomposition, With Evidence from Rural China," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(476), pages 93-106, January.
    9. Magne Mogstad, 2007. "Measuring Income Inequality under Restricted Interpersonal Comparability," Discussion Papers 498, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    10. Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2013. "Factor Components of Inequality: A Cross-Country Study," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(4), pages 689-727, December.
    11. Cecilia Garcia Peñalosa & Orgiazzi, E., 2011. "GINI DP 12: Factor Components of Inequality. A Cross-Country Study," GINI Discussion Papers 12, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    12. Reinhard Schiel & Murray Leibbrandt & David Lam, 2016. "Assessing the Impact of Social Grants on Inequality: A South African Case Study," International Economic Association Series, in: Timothy Besley (ed.), Contemporary Issues in Development Economics, chapter 8, pages 112-135, Palgrave Macmillan.
    13. Wan, Guang Hua, 2001. "Changes in regional inequality in rural China: decomposing the Gini index by income sources," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 45(3), pages 1-21.
    14. Stéphane Mussard, 2006. "Une réconciliation entre la décomposition en sous-groupes et la décomposition en sources de revenu de l'indice de Gini. La multi-décomposition de l'indicateur de Gini," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 81, pages 169-193.
    15. Yin Heng, 2008. "Fiscal Disparities and the Equalization Effects of Fiscal Transfers at the County Level in China," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 9(1), pages 115-149, May.
    16. Maté Sáncuez-Val, M. & García Pérez De Lema, D. & López Hernández, F., 2009. "La influencia de los efectos espaciales en el crecimiento de la productividad de la PYME/," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 27, pages 283(24á)-28, Abril.
    17. Fräßdorf, Anna & Grabka, Markus M. & Schwarze, Johannes, 2008. "The Impact of Household Capital Income on Income Inequality: A Factor Decomposition Analysis for Great Britain, Germany and the USA," IZA Discussion Papers 3492, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Satya Paul, 2018. "Effects of Happiness on Income Generation and Inequality," Departmental Working Papers 2018-10, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    19. Yunbo Zhou, 2009. "The factors that impact income inequality of rural residents in China: Decomposing the Gini coefficient from income components," Frontiers of Economics in China, Springer;Higher Education Press, vol. 4(4), pages 617-632, December.
    20. Ivica Urban, 2014. "Contributions of taxes and benefits to vertical and horizontal effects," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(3), pages 619-645, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:15:y:2007:i:4:p:319-321. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.