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Global Income Distribution and Inequality: 1993 and 2000

Author

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  • Duangkamon Chotikapanich
  • William E Griffiths
  • D.S. Prasada Rao
  • Vicar Valencia

Abstract

The nature of global and regional income distributions and the extent of inequality are examined using country-level data on income distributions drawn from World Bank studies and the World Institute for Development Economics Research for the period 1993 - 2000. Beta-2 income distributions are fitted to population and income share data for 91 countries. Regional and global income distributions are obtained as population weighted mixtures of the country-specific income distributions. Gini and Theil inequality measures for countries, regions and the world are expressed in terms of the parameters of the beta-2 distributions, and, for regions and the world, decomposed into their within- and between-country components. Empirical results show a high degree of global inequality, but with some evidence of inequality decreasing between the two years, with the decrease being largely attributable to growth in China.

Suggested Citation

  • Duangkamon Chotikapanich & William E Griffiths & D.S. Prasada Rao & Vicar Valencia, 2009. "Global Income Distribution and Inequality: 1993 and 2000," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1062, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:1062
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    Cited by:

    1. Gholamreza Hajargasht & William E. Griffiths & Joseph Brice & D.S. Prasada Rao & Duangkamon Chotikapanich, 2012. "Inference for Income Distributions Using Grouped Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 563-575, May.
    2. David Warner & Prasada Rao & William E. Griffiths & Duangkamon Chotikapanich, 2011. "Global Inequality: Levels and Trends, 1993-2005," Discussion Papers Series 436, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    3. Vanesa Jordá & José Sarabia, 2015. "International Convergence in Well-Being Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 120(1), pages 1-27, January.
    4. Xia, Yin-Shuang & Sun, Lu-Xuan & Feng, Chao, 2022. "What causes spatial inequalities of low-carbon development in China's transport sector? A newly proposed meta-frontier DEA-based decomposition approach," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    5. Hajargasht, Gholamreza & Griffiths, William E., 2013. "Pareto–lognormal distributions: Inequality, poverty, and estimation from grouped income data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 593-604.
    6. Thomas Goda, 2013. "Changes in income inequality from a global perspective: An overview," Working Papers PKWP1303, Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES).
    7. Gholamreza Hajargsht & William E. Griffiths & Joseph Brice & D.S. Prasada Rao & Duangkamon Chotikapanich, 2011. "GMM Estimation of Income Distributions from Grouped Data," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1129, The University of Melbourne.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    beta-2 distribution; mixture distribution; Gini coefficient; Theil index; inequality decomposition.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General
    • C16 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Econometric and Statistical Methods; Specific Distributions
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

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