IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/msh/ebswps/2006-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Impact of Structural Change in Education, Industry and Infrastructure on Income Distribution in Sri Lanka

Author

Listed:
  • Ramani Gunatilaka
  • Duangkamon Chotikapanich
  • Brett Inder

Abstract

Income inequality increased in Sri Lanka following trade liberalization in 1977. This study applies a semi-parametric method to investigate whether structural changes in education, industry and infrastructure access underlay the change in the distribution. The study finds that while the concentration of people shifted towards higher income ranges at every stage in the distribution between 1985 and 2002, changes in access to infrastructure triggered much of the shift. Higher levels of educational attainment also had an impact. But the middle classes appear to have benefited disproportionately more from the provision of education and infrastructure services than did the poor. The analysis recommends that such services are targeted more effectively towards those in the poorest income deciles to enable them to move out of poverty to higher income ranges.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramani Gunatilaka & Duangkamon Chotikapanich & Brett Inder, 2006. "Impact of Structural Change in Education, Industry and Infrastructure on Income Distribution in Sri Lanka," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 21/06, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:msh:ebswps:2006-21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/ebs/pubs/wpapers/2006/wp21-06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garry F. Barrett & Thomas F. Crossley & Christopher Worswick, 2000. "Consumption and Income Inequality in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 76(233), pages 116-138, June.
    2. Bhalla, Surjit S & Glewwe, Paul, 1986. "Growth and Equity in Developing Countries: A Reinterpretation of the Sri Lankan Experience," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 1(1), pages 35-63, September.
    3. Deaton, A. & Zaidi, S., 1999. "Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates for Welfare Analysis," Papers 192, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Development Studies.
    4. José Mata & José A. F. Machado, 2005. "Counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(4), pages 445-465.
    5. Angus Deaton & Salman Zaidi, 2002. "Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates for Welfare Analysis," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 14101, April.
    6. Robert Summers, 1973. "International Price Comparisons Based Upon Incomplete Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 19(1), pages 1-16, March.
    7. Isenman, Paul, 1980. "Basic needs: The case of Sri Lanka," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 237-258, March.
    8. repec:bla:ecorec:v:76:y:2000:i:233:p:116-38 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Lerman, Robert I. & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1989. "Improving the accuracy of estimates of Gini coefficients," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 43-47, September.
    10. Conchita D’ambrosio, 2001. "Household Characteristics and the Distribution of Income In Italy: An Application of Social Distance Measures," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 47(1), pages 43-64, March.
    11. S.R. Osmani, 1994. "Is There a Conflict Between Growth and Welfarism? The Significance of the Sri Lanka Debate," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 25(2), pages 387-421, April.
    12. Philippe Van Kerm, 2003. "Adaptive kernel density estimation," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 3(2), pages 148-156, June.
    13. Cameron, Lisa A., 2000. "Poverty and inequality in Java: examining the impact of the changing age, educational and industrial structure," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 149-180, June.
    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. S. R. Osmani, 2008. "The Demands of Inclusive Growth: Lessons from South Asia (The Mahbub Ul Haq Memorial Lecture)," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 47(4), pages 381-402.

    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. Ramani Gunatilaka & Duangkamon Chotikapanich, 2006. "Inequality Trends and Determinants in Sri Lanka 1980-2002: A Shapley Approach to Decomposition," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 6/06, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    2. Leonardo Gasparini & Mariana Marchionni & Federico Gutierrez, 2004. "Simulating Income Distribution Changes in Bolivia: a Microeconometric Approach," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0012, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    3. Esenaliev, Damir & Steiner, Susan, 2014. "Ethnicity and the distribution of welfare: Evidence from southern Kyrgyzstan," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 970-982.
    4. Etilé, F, 2008. "Food Price Policies and the Distribution of Body Mass Index: Theory and Empirical Evidence from France," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 08/10, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    5. Clementi, Fabio & Molini, Vasco & Schettino, Francesco, 2018. "All that Glitters is not Gold: Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 275-291.
    6. Akanksha Srivastava & Sanjay Mohanty, 2012. "Poverty Among Elderly in India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 493-514, December.
    7. repec:dgr:rugggd:gd-114 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Akwasi Ampofo, 2021. "Oil at work: natural resource effects on household well-being in Ghana," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 1013-1058, February.
    9. Klasen, Stephan & Reimers, Malte, 2017. "Looking at Pro-Poor Growth from an Agricultural Perspective," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 147-168.
    10. Anna D'Souza & Dean Jolliffe, 2012. "Rising Food Prices and Coping Strategies: Household-level Evidence from Afghanistan," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(2), pages 282-299, August.
    11. Sami Bibi & Mustapha K. Nabli, 2009. "Income Inequality In The Arab Region: Data And Measurement, Patterns And Trends," Middle East Development Journal (MEDJ), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(02), pages 275-314.
    12. Stoddard, Pamela & Handley, Margaret A. & Vargas Bustamante, Arturo & Schillinger, Dean, 2011. "The influence of indigenous status and community indigenous composition on obesity and diabetes among Mexican adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(11), pages 1635-1643.
    13. Mussa, Richard, 2009. "Impact of fertility on objective and subjective poverty in Malawi," MPRA Paper 16089, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Fabio Clementi & Francesco Schettino, 2013. "Income polarization in Brazil, 2001-2011: A distributional analysis using PNAD data," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(3), pages 1796-1815.
    15. Ravallion, Martin, 2010. "The Developing World's Bulging (but Vulnerable) Middle Class," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 445-454, April.
    16. Grimm, Michael & Harttgen, Kenneth & Klasen, Stephan & Misselhorn, Mark, 2008. "A Human Development Index by Income Groups," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 2527-2546, December.
    17. Saadia Refaqat, 2005. "Redistributive Impact of GST Tax Reform: Pakistan, 1990-2001," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 44(4), pages 841-862.
    18. Özler, Berk, 2007. "Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-apartheid South Africa," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(3), pages 487-529, April.
    19. Patrick Ward, 2014. "Measuring the Level and Inequality of Wealth: An Application to China," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 613-635, December.
    20. Almås, Ingvild & Johnsen, Åshild Auglænd, 2012. "The cost of living in China: Implications for inequality and poverty," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 21/2012, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    21. Ramani Gunatilaka & Duangkamon Chotikapanich, 2009. "Accounting For Sri Lanka'S Expenditure Inequality 1980–2002: Regression‐Based Decomposition Approaches," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(4), pages 882-906, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income inequality; Sri Lanka; education; infrastructure; kernel density decomposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:msh:ebswps:2006-21. 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: Professor Xibin Zhang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dxmonau.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.