IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nzt/nztwps/04-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Adult Equivalence Scales, Inequality and Poverty in New Zealand

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This paper examines the sensitivity of inequality and poverty measures to the choice of adult equivalence scales and the type of income unit examined. Comparisons are made using parametric equivalence scales, and income units include individuals, equivalent adults and households. The results are based on HES data for total expenditure. A variety of equivalence scales, for New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the OECD are examined. The implications of varying the poverty line are also considered.

Suggested Citation

  • John Creedy & Catherine Sleeman, 2004. "Adult Equivalence Scales, Inequality and Poverty in New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/21, New Zealand Treasury.
    • Handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:04/21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2007-09/twp04-21.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Banks, James & Johnson, Paul, 1994. "Equivalence Scale Relativities Revisited," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(425), pages 883-890, July.
    2. Timothy Smeeding & Gunther Schmaus & Brigitte Buhmann & Lee Rainwater, 1988. "Equivalence Scales, Well-Being, Inequality and Poverty: Sensitivity Estimates Across Ten Countries Using the LIS Database," LIS Working papers 17, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    4. André Decoster & Erwin Ooghe, 2002. "Weighting with individuals, equivalent individuals, or not weighting at all. Does it matter empirically?," Public Economics Working Paper Series ces0215, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centrum voor Economische Studiën, Working Group Public Economics.
    5. repec:bla:econom:v:64:y:1997:i:254:p:233-44 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. John Creedy & Justin Van De Ven, 2001. "Decomposing Redistributive Effects of Taxes and Transfers in Australia: Annual and Lifetime Measures," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 185-198, June.
    7. Richard Blundell & Ian Preston, 1998. "Consumption Inequality and Income Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 603-640.
    8. John Creedy, 2002. "The GST and Vertical, Horizontal and Reranking Effects of Indirect Taxation in Australia," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 35(4), pages 380-390, December.
    9. Plotnick, Robert, 1981. "A Measure of Horizontal Inequity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(2), pages 283-288, May.
    10. Aronson, J. Richard & Lambert, Peter J., 1994. "Decomposing the Gini Coefficient to Reveal the Vertical, Horizontal, and Reranking Effects of Income Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 47(2), pages 273-94, June.
    11. Brigitte Buhmann & Lee Rainwater & Guenther Schmaus & Timothy M. Smeeding, 1988. "Equivalence Scales, Well‐Being, Inequality, And Poverty: Sensitivity Estimates Across Ten Countries Using The Luxembourg Income Study (Lis) Database," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 34(2), pages 115-142, June.
    12. Stein Ringen, 1991. "Households, Standard Of Living, And Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 37(1), pages 1-13, March.
    13. Jenkins, Stephen P & Cowell, Frank A, 1994. "Parametric Equivalence Scales and Scale Relativities," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(425), pages 891-900, July.
    14. repec:bla:revinw:v:30:y:1984:i:3:p:351-75 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Coulter, Fiona A E & Cowell, Frank A & Jenkins, Stephen P, 1992. "Equivalence Scale Relativities and the Extent of Inequality and Poverty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 102(414), pages 1067-1082, September.
    16. John Creedy, 1997. "Labour Supply and Social Welfare when Utility Depends on a Threshold Consumption Level," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 73(221), pages 159-168, June.
    17. repec:bla:revinw:v:34:y:1988:i:2:p:115-42 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. John Creedy & Ivan Tuckwell, 2003. "Reweighting the New Zealand Household Economic Survey for Tax Microsimuilation Modelling," Treasury Working Paper Series 03/33, New Zealand Treasury.
    19. Frank A. Cowell, 1984. "The Structure Of American Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 30(3), pages 351-375, September.
    20. Aronson, J. Richard & Lambert, Peter J., 1994. "Decomposing the Gini Coefficient to Reveal the Vertical, Horizontal, and Reranking Effects of Income Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 47(2), pages 273-294, June.
    21. Richard Blundell & Ian Preston, 1994. "Income or consumption in the measurement of inequality and poverty?," IFS Working Papers W94/12, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    22. John Creedy, 2004. "Survey Reweighting For Tax Microsimulation Modelling," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Studies on Economic Well-Being: Essays in the Honor of John P. Formby, pages 229-249, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    23. Glewwe, Paul, 1991. "Household equivalence scales and the measurement of inequality : Transfers from the poor to the rich could decrease inequality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 211-216, March.
    24. Decoster, Andre & Schokkaert, Erik & Van Camp, Guy, 1997. "Is redistribution through indirect taxes equitable?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 599-608, April.
    25. repec:bla:ecorec:v:73:y:1997:i:221:p:159-68 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Orazio Attanasio & Tullio Jappelli, 1997. "The life cycle hypothesis and consumption inequality," IFS Working Papers W97/17, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    27. repec:bla:ausecp:v:40:y:2001:i:2:p:185-98 is not listed on IDEAS
    28. John Creedy & Rosanna Scutella, 2003. "The Role of the Unit of Analysis in Tax Policy Reform Evaluations," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2003n28, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    29. repec:bla:revinw:v:25:y:1979:i:4:p:365-75 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Jürgen Faik, 2011. "A new framework of measuring inequality: Variable equivalence scales and group-specific well-being limits. Sensitivity findings for German personal income distribution 1995-2009," Working Papers 219, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    2. Creedy, John, 2013. "Alternative Distributions for Inequality and Poverty Comparisons," Working Paper Series 18784, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    3. Mariano Rojas, 2007. "A Subjective Well-being Equivalence Scale for Mexico: Estimation and Poverty and Income-distribution Implications," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 273-293.
    4. John Creedy & Cath Sleeman, 2005. "Excise taxation in New Zealand," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 1-35.
    5. Kristie Carter & Penny Mok & Trinh Le, 2014. "Income Mobility in New Zealand: A Descriptive Analysis," Treasury Working Paper Series 14/15, New Zealand Treasury.
    6. John Creedy & Rosanna Scutella, 2004. "The Role of the Unit of Analysis in Tax Policy Return Evaluations of Inequality and Social Welfare," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 7(1), pages 89-108, March.

    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. John Creedy & Cath Sleeman, 2005. "Adult equivalence scales, inequality and poverty," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 51-81.
    2. John Creedy & Rosanna Scutella, 2003. "The Role of the Unit of Analysis in Tax Policy Reform Evaluations," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2003n28, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    3. John Creedy & Rosanna Scutella, 2004. "The Role of the Unit of Analysis in Tax Policy Return Evaluations of Inequality and Social Welfare," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 7(1), pages 89-108, March.
    4. Justin Van De Ven & John Creedy, 2005. "Taxation, Reranking and Equivalence Scales," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 13-36, January.
    5. Sunil Kumar & Renuka Mahadevan, 2008. "Construction of An Adult Equivalence Index to Measure Intra-household Inequality and Poverty: Case Study," Discussion Papers Series 363, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    6. Cowell, Frank & Mercader-Prats, Magda, 1999. "Equivalence scales and inequality," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2190, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Paul Makdissi & Quentin Wodon, 2004. "Migration, poverty, and housing in Honduras," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 31(1 Year 20), pages 5-20, June.
    8. Gordon Anderson, 2003. "Poverty in America 1970-1990: who did gain ground? An application of stochastic dominance criteria employing simultaneous inequality tests in a partial panel," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(6), pages 621-640.
    9. Hillringhaus, Tilman & Peichl, Andreas, 2010. "Die Messung von Armut unter Berücksichtigung regional divergierender Lebenshaltungskosten und öffentlicher Leistungen," IZA Discussion Papers 5344, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Riccardo Massari, 2005. "A Measure of Welfare Based on Permanent Income Hypothesis: An Application on Italian Households Budgets," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 64(1), pages 55-92, September.
    11. repec:cte:werepe:2909 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Pogorelskiy, Kirill & Seidl, Christian & Traub, Stefan, 2010. "Tax progression: International and intertemporal comparison using LIS data," Economics Working Papers 2010-08, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    13. Mysikova, Martina & Zelinsky, Tomas, 2019. "On the Measurement of the Income Poverty Rate: the Equivalence Scale across Europe," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 99(4), pages 383-397.
    14. Okamoto, Masato, 2012. "The Relationship between the Equivalence Scale and the Inequality Index and Its Impact on the Measurement of Income Inequality," MPRA Paper 37410, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Mekonnen Bersisa & Almas Heshmati, 2021. "A Distributional Analysis of Uni-and Multidimensional Poverty and Inequalities in Ethiopia," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 805-835, June.
    16. Christopher Ball & John Creedy, 2015. "Inequality in New Zealand 1983/84 to 2013/14," Treasury Working Paper Series 15/06, New Zealand Treasury.
    17. Creedy, John & Guest, Ross, 2008. "Population ageing and intertemporal consumption: Representative agent versus social planner," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 485-498, May.
    18. John Creedy & Jesse Eedrah, 2014. "The Role of Value Judgements in Measuring Inequality," Treasury Working Paper Series 14/13, New Zealand Treasury.
    19. Boyd H. Hunter & Steven Kennedy & Nicholas Biddle, 2004. "Indigenous and Other Australian Poverty: Revisiting the Importance of Equivalence Scales," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(251), pages 411-422, December.
    20. Angela Daley & Thesia Garner & Shelley Phipps & Eva Sierminska, 2020. "Differences across countries and time in household expenditure patterns: implications for the estimation of equivalence scales," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(6), pages 734-757, November.
    21. Regan, Mark & Kakoulidou, Theano, 2022. "How important are the unit of analysis and equivalence scales when measuring income poverty and inequality? Evidence from Ireland," Papers WP721, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; poverty; equivalence scales; living standard; income unit;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    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:nzt:nztwps:04/21. 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: CSS I&T Web & Publishing, The Treasury (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tregvnz.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.