IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2015-036.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reversal of the Kuznets Curve: Study on the Inequality-Development Relation Using Top Income Shares Data

Author

Listed:
  • Elina Tuominen

Abstract

This paper uses recently published top 1% income share series in studying the inequality- development association. The top income shares data are of high quality and cover about a century for some countries and thus provide an interesting opportunity to study slow development processes. The empirical inequality-development studies have started to call into question the use of parametric (quadratic) specifications. To address the issue of functional form, this study exploits penalized spline methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Elina Tuominen, 2015. "Reversal of the Kuznets Curve: Study on the Inequality-Development Relation Using Top Income Shares Data," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-036, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
  • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2015-036
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp2015-036.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    2. Dahan, Momi & Tsiddon, Daniel, 1998. "Demographic Transition, Income Distribution, and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 29-52, March.
    3. Zhou, Xianbo & Li, Kui-Wai, 2011. "Inequality and development: Evidence from semiparametric estimation with panel data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(3), pages 203-207.
    4. Roine, Jesper & Waldenström, Daniel, 2014. "Long-Run Trends in the Distribution of Income and Wealth," Working Paper Series 1021, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    5. John A. List & Craig A. Gallet, 1999. "The Kuznets Curve: What Happens After the Inverted‐U?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(2), pages 200-206, June.
    6. Deininger, Klaus & Squire, Lyn, 1996. "A New Data Set Measuring Income Inequality," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 10(3), pages 565-591, September.
    7. Deininger, Klaus & Squire, Lyn, 1998. "New ways of looking at old issues: inequality and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 259-287.
    8. Simon Kuznets & Elizabeth Jenks, 1953. "Shares of Upper Income Groups in Income and Savings (1953)," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kuzn53-1.
    9. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 1-41.
    10. Frazer, Garth, 2006. "Inequality and development across and within countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 1459-1481, September.
    11. Robinson, Sherman, 1976. "A Note on the U Hypothesis Relating Income Inequality and Economic Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(3), pages 437-440, June.
    12. Andrew Leigh, 2007. "How Closely Do Top Income Shares Track Other Measures of Inequality?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(524), pages 619-633, November.
    13. Anthony Atkinson & Thomas Piketty, 2010. "Top Incomes : A Global Perspective," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00754875, HAL.
    14. Roine, Jesper & Vlachos, Jonas & Waldenström, Daniel, 2009. "The long-run determinants of inequality: What can we learn from top income data?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 974-988, August.
    15. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 1997. "A Theory of Trickle-Down Growth and Development," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(2), pages 151-172.
    16. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2006. "The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 200-205, May.
    17. Ravi Kanbur & Juzhong Zhuang, 2013. "Urbanization and Inequality in Asia," Asian Development Review, MIT Press, vol. 30(1), pages 131-147, March.
    18. Anthony Atkinson & Thomas Piketty, 2007. "Top incomes over the twentieth century: A contrast between continental european and english-speaking countries," Post-Print halshs-00754859, HAL.
    19. Ahluwalia, Montek S., 1976. "Inequality, poverty and development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 307-342, December.
    20. Huang, Ho-Chuan (River) & Lin, Shu-Chin, 2007. "Semiparametric Bayesian inference of the Kuznets hypothesis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 491-505, July.
    21. Atkinson, A. B. & Piketty, Thomas (ed.), 2010. "Top Incomes: A Global Perspective," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199286898.
    22. Huang, Ho-Chuan River, 2004. "A flexible nonlinear inference to the Kuznets hypothesis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 289-296, August.
    23. Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 3-20, Summer.
    24. Anand, Sudhir & Kanbur, S. M. R., 1993. "Inequality and development A critique," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 19-43, June.
    25. Barro, Robert J, 2000. "Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 5-32, March.
    26. World Bank, 2014. "World Development Indicators 2014," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 18237.
    27. Andrea Brandolini & Anthony B. Atkinson, 2001. "Promise and Pitfalls in the Use of "Secondary" Data-Sets: Income Inequality in OECD Countries As a Case Study," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(3), pages 771-799, September.
    28. Desbordes, Rodolphe & Verardi, Vincenzo, 2012. "Refitting the Kuznets curve," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 258-261.
    29. Atkinson, A. B. & Piketty, Thomas (ed.), 2007. "Top Incomes Over the Twentieth Century: A Contrast Between Continental European and English-Speaking Countries," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199286881.
    30. Lin, Shu-Chin & (River) Huang, Ho-Chuan & Weng, Hsiao-Wen, 2006. "A semi-parametric partially linear investigation of the Kuznets' hypothesis," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 634-647, September.
    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. Stanislaw Maciej Kot, 2019. "Deriving The Parameter Of Inequality Aversion From A Parametric Distribution Of Incomes," GUT FME Working Paper Series A 58, Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdansk University of Technology.
    2. Stanislaw Maciej Kot & Piotr Paradowski, 2022. "The Atlas of Inequality Aversion: Theory and Empirical Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study Database," LIS Working papers 826, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Adnen Ben Nasr & Mehmet Balcilar & Seyi Saint Akadiri & Rangan Gupta, 2019. "Kuznets Curve for the US: A Reconsideration Using Cosummability," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 142(2), pages 827-843, April.

    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. Elina Tuominen, 2015. "Reversal of the Kuznets curve: Study on the inequalitys development relation using top income shares sata," WIDER Working Paper Series 036, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Tuominen Elina, 2016. "Reversal of the Kuznets curve: Study on the inequality–development relation using top income shares data," Working Papers 1610, Tampere University, Faculty of Management and Business, Economics.
    3. Tuominen Elina, 2016. "Top-end inequality and growth: Empirical evidence," Working Papers 1608, Tampere University, Faculty of Management and Business, Economics.
    4. Tuominen Elina, 2016. "Changes or levels? Reassessment of the relationship between top-end inequality and growth," Working Papers 1609, Tampere University, Faculty of Management and Business, Economics.
    5. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Emmanuel Chavez & Gerardo Esquivel, 2017. "Growth is (really) good for the (really) rich," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(12), pages 2639-2675, December.
    6. Atanu Ghoshray & Issam Malki & Javier Ordóñez, 2020. "Trends, Breaks and Persistence in Top Income Shares," Working Papers 2020/12, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    7. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    8. Jalil, Mohammad Muaz, 2009. "Re-examining Kuznets Hypothesis: Does Data Matter?," MPRA Paper 72557, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Frazer, Garth, 2006. "Inequality and development across and within countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 1459-1481, September.
    10. Metzing, Maria & Bartels, Charlotte, 2016. "An integrated approach for top-corrected Ginis," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145818, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Bourguignon, Francois, 2005. "The Effect of Economic Growth on Social Structures," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 27, pages 1701-1747, Elsevier.
    12. Atanu Ghoshray & Issam Malki & Javier Ordóñez, 2022. "On the long-run dynamics of income and wealth inequality," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 375-408, February.
    13. Filip Novokmet, 2018. "The long-run evolution of inequality in the Czech Lands, 1898-2015," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02878212, HAL.
    14. Burkhauser, Richard V. & Herault, Nicolas & Jenkins, Stephen P. & Wilkins, Roger, 2016. "What Has Been Happening to UK Income Inequality since the Mid-1990s? Answers from Reconciled and Combined Household Survey and Tax Return Data," IZA Discussion Papers 9718, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Petri Böckerman, 2013. "Top Income Shares and Mortality: Evidence from Advanced Countries," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 22(1), pages 57-69, March.
    16. Rolf Aaberge & François Bourguignon & Andrea Brandolini & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Janet C. Gornick & John Hills & Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins & Eric Marlier & John Micklewright & Brian Nolan, 2017. "Tony Atkinson and his Legacy," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(3), pages 411-444, September.
    17. Caparoz, Marcel & Marçal, Emerson Fernandes & Mattos, Enlinson, 2019. "A time series analysis of household income inequality in Brazil 1977 to 2013," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 73(4), December.
    18. Stimpfle, Alexander & Stadelmann, David, 2015. "The Impact of Fundamental Development Factors on Different Income Groups: International Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113128, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Filip Novokmet, 2018. "The long-run evolution of inequality in the Czech Lands, 1898-2015," PSE Working Papers hal-02878212, HAL.
    20. Christoph A. Schaltegger & Christoph Gorgas, 2011. "The Evolution of Top Incomes in Switzerland over the 20th Century," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(IV), pages 479-519, December.

    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:unu:wpaper:wp-2015-036. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.