IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/wc2000/1288.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inequality Decomposition by Factor Component: A New Approach Illustrated on the Taiwanese Case

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Fournier

    (CERDI - Universite d' Auverne and CREST)

Abstract

The issue of measuring the relative importance of income factors in the distribution of household income is at the heart of studies of changes in income inequality. Usual decompositions methods mostly based on Shorrocks (1982) framework allow for a broad evaluation of the contribution of income sources. These decomposition procedures however suffer from two strong drawbacks: i) the share of inequality imputed to any income source is independent of the inequality measure used and, ii) the impact of changes in the marginal distribution of income sources cannot be disentangled from the effect of changes in correlation between sources. This paper generalises the methodology briefly and intuitively initiated by Burtless (1999) and provides a general framework for inequality decomposition by factor components. This method, based on the concept of rank correlation, has two main advantages over usual decomposition procedures: i) it allows for a decomposition of observed changes in the whole income distribution and not just of a specific inequality index and, ii) it enables to isolate the specific impact of marginal distribution changes of income sources as well as that of changes in correlation between sources. This paper illustrates the application of the methodology on Taiwanese data over the 1979-94 period. After a long phase of economic development with decreasing inequality, Taiwan has experienced a widening of income disparities since the end of the 70s. Many studies emphasise the role played by changes in family structure and especially to a rise in assortative mating of spouses, but fail to measure the specific impact of rising correlation between spouses' income. Using the methodology developed in the first part of the paper, we find that changes in the earning structure of household members have been strongly unequalizing and that the main force comes from the rise in the correlation between spouses' earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Fournier, 2000. "Inequality Decomposition by Factor Component: A New Approach Illustrated on the Taiwanese Case," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1288, Econometric Society.
  • Handle: RePEc:ecm:wc2000:1288
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/es2000/1288.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus S. Deaton & Christina Paxson, 1994. "Saving, Growth, and Aging in Taiwan," NBER Chapters, in: Studies in the Economics of Aging, pages 331-362, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Shorrocks, A F, 1982. "Inequality Decomposition by Factor Components," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 193-211, January.
    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. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M & Pierce, Brooks, 1993. "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 410-442, June.
    5. Atkinson, A B, 1997. "Bringing Income Distribution in from the Cold," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(441), pages 297-321, March.
    6. Graham Pyatt & Chau-nan Chen & John Fei, 1980. "The Distribution of Income by Factor Components," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 95(3), pages 451-473.
    7. repec:bla:econom:v:63:y:1996:i:250:p:s119-39 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. repec:adr:anecst:y:2011:i:101-102:p:02 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Frédéric Chantreuil & Alain Trannoy, 2011. "Inequality Decomposition Values," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 101-102, pages 13-36.
    10. Kanbur, Ravi & Lustig, Nora, 1999. "Why is Inequality Back on the Agenda?," Working Papers 127690, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    11. Burtless, Gary, 1999. "Effects of growing wage disparities and changing family composition on the U.S. income distribution," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 853-865, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Masato Okamoto, 2011. "Source decomposition of changes in income inequality: the integral-based approach and its approximation by the chained Shapley-value approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(2), pages 145-181, June.

    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. Martin FOURNIER, 1999. "Décomposition de l'inégalité de revenu par source : méthode des rangs et application au cas de Taiwan version anglaise : "Inequality Decomposition by factor Component: a "rank correlation&qu," Working Papers 199920, CERDI.
    2. Martin Fournier, 2001. "Inequality decomposition by factor component : a “rank-correlation” approach illustrated on the Taiwanese case," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 67(4), pages 381-403.
    3. Martin FOURNIER, 2001. "Inequality decomposition by factor component : a “rank-correlation” approach illustrated on the Taiwanese case," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 2001042, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Lara Vivian, 2016. "Are changes in the dispersion of hours worked a cause of increased earnings inequality?," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-34, December.
    7. Anna Fräßdorf & Markus M. Grabka & Johannes Schwarze, 2008. "The impact of household capital income on income inequality: A factor decomposition analysis for Great Britain, Germany and the USA," Working Papers 89, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    8. 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.
    9. Carlo V. Fiorio, 2006. "Understanding Inequality Trends:Microsimulation Decomposition for Italy," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 78, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    10. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Eve Caroli & Philippe Aghion, 1999. "Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1615-1660, December.
    11. Marco Ranaldi, 2016. "On the Measurement of Functional Income Distribution," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 16051, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    12. 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.
    13. Nerijus Černiauskas & Denisa M. Sologon & Cathal O’Donoghue & Linas Tarasonis, 2022. "Income Inequality and Redistribution in Lithuania: The Role of Policy, Labor Market, Income, and Demographics," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(S1), pages 131-166, April.
    14. 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.
    15. Blundell, Richard & Joyce, Robert & Norris Keiller, Agnes & Ziliak, James P., 2018. "Income inequality and the labour market in Britain and the US," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 48-62.
    16. Marco Ranaldi, 2018. "On the Measurement of Functional Income Distribution," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01379229, HAL.
    17. Chantreuil, Frédéric & Fourrey, Kévin & Lebon, Isabelle & Rebière, Thérèse, 2021. "Magnitude and evolution of gender and race contributions to earnings inequality across US regions," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 45-59.
    18. Lwin Lwin Aung & Peter Warr, 2021. "Decomposing changes in inequality: Evidence from Myanmar," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 1172-1196, August.
    19. C. Chameni Nembua, 2008. "The 'natural' bidimensional decomposition of inequality indices: evaluating factor contributions to households welfare inequality in Cameroon, 1996-2001," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(12), pages 963-970.
    20. Ferreira, Francisco H. G., 2022. "The analysis of inequality in the Bretton Woods institutions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 116018, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    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:ecm:wc2000:1288. 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: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    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.