IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04154667.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bipolarisation measurement: A two-income approach with an application to nine Sub-Saharan African countries

Author

Listed:
  • Florent Bresson

    (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne)

Abstract

This paper introduces and axiomatically characterises new classes of bipolarisation indices based on the equivalent representation of observed distributions with the help of two-income distributions. This representation makes it possible to interpret the suggested indices either as I) the representative income gap between individuals from the top part of the distribution and those from the bottom part, orii) the excess representative income share of the top part compared against its population share.The proposed bipolarisation indices show additional appealing features. First, they can handle any population partition between the p percent poorest individuals and the (1-p) richest individuals (including the popular p=50% choice). Secondly, they can be easily decomposed into spread and clustering contributions toward total bipolarisation. Finally, they relate to familiar inequality indices so that bipolarisation levels can easily be connected to the average income and inequality levels relating to each part of the income distribution. The new classes include some prominent rank-dependent bipolarisation indices from the literature as special cases, together with numerous novel proposals for both absolute and relative approaches to bipolarisation. An illustration is given using consumption data from nine Sub-Saharan African countries.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Florent Bresson, 2023. "Bipolarisation measurement: A two-income approach with an application to nine Sub-Saharan African countries," Post-Print hal-04154667, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04154667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Walter Bossert & William Schworm, 2008. "A Class of Two‐Group Polarization Measures," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(6), pages 1169-1187, December.
    2. Esteban, Joan & Ray, Debraj, 1994. "On the Measurement of Polarization," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(4), pages 819-851, July.
    3. Wolfson, Michael C, 1994. "When Inequalities Diverge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 353-358, May.
    4. Weymark, John A., 1981. "Generalized gini inequality indices," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 409-430, August.
    5. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931.
    6. Satya R. Chakravarty, 2009. "Equity and efficiency as components of a social welfare function," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 5(2), pages 181-199, June.
    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. Satya R. Chakravarty & Rama Pal & Rupayan Pal & Palash Sarkar, 2022. "Minimum inequality taxation, average and minimally progressive taxations and depolarization," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2022-010, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    2. Chakravarty, Satya R. & Sarkar, Palash, 2022. "A synthesis of local and effective tax progressivity measurement," MPRA Paper 115180, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Roberto Ezcurra, 2009. "Does Income Polarization Affect Economic Growth? The Case of the European Regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 267-285.
    4. Chiara Assunta Ricci & Sergio Scicchitano, 2021. "Decomposing changes in income polarization by population group: what happened during the crisis?," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(1), pages 235-259, April.
    5. Joan Maria Esteban, 2018. "Inequality and Conflict," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 26(1), pages 1-25, March.
    6. Satya R. Chakravarty & Amita Majumder & Sonali Roy, 2007. "A Treatment Of Absolute Indices Of Polarization," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 58(2), pages 273-293, June.
    7. Peter Lambert, 2010. "James Foster and Michael Wolfson’s 1992 paper “Polarization and the decline of the middle class”," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(2), pages 241-245, June.
    8. Roberto Ezcurra & Pedro Pascual, 2007. "Regional Polarisation and National Development in the European Union," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(1), pages 99-122, January.
    9. Alexander Sohn, 2015. "Beyond Conventional Wage Discrimination Analysis: Assessing Comprehensive Wage Distributions of Males and Females Using Structured Additive Distributional Regression," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 802, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    10. Vincenzo Prete & Alessandro Sommacal & Claudio Zoli, 2016. "Optimal Non-Welfarist Income Taxation for Inequality and Polarization Reduction," Working Papers 23/2016, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    11. Remuzgo, Lorena & Sarabia, José María, 2013. "Desigualdad en la distribución mundial de emisiones de CO2 por sectores: Descomposición y estudio de sensibilidad/Inequality of Global Distribution of CO2 Emissions by Sector: Decomposition and Sensit," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 31, pages 65-92, Enero.
    12. Iñaki Permanyer & Conchita D'Ambrosio, 2015. "Measuring Social Polarization with Ordinal and Categorical Data," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(3), pages 311-327, June.
    13. Juan Gabriel Rodríguez, 2015. "A Class of Social Welfare Functions That Depend on Mean Income and Income Polarization," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(3), pages 422-439, September.
    14. Martyna Kobus, 2014. "On the measurement of polarization for ordinal data," Working Papers 325, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    15. Martyna Kobus & Olga Półchłopek & Gaston Yalonetzky, 2019. "Inequality and Welfare in Quality of Life Among OECD Countries: Non-parametric Treatment of Ordinal Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 201-232, May.
    16. Abdelkrim Araar, 2008. "On the Decomposition of Polarization Indices: Illustrations with Chinese and Nigerian Household Surveys," Cahiers de recherche 0806, CIRPEE.
    17. Rolf Aaberge, 2007. "Gini’s nuclear family," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 5(3), pages 305-322, December.
    18. Wang, Chen & Wan, Guanghua, 2015. "Income polarization in China: Trends and changes," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 58-72.
    19. Rolf Aaberge & A B Atkinson, 2013. "The median as watershed," Discussion Papers 749, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    20. Evans Jadotte, 2006. "Income Distribution and Poverty in the Republic of Haiti," Working Papers PMMA 2006-13, PEP-PMMA.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    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:hal:journl:hal-04154667. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.