Inequality Measurement: Methods and Data

Cowell, Frank; Flachaire, Emmanuel

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_148-1

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…To discuss these we introduce the concept of a reference point , a particular value used as the basis for assessing changes in inequality. In principle there are several possibilities for specifying this reference point, and which of them seems reasonable may depend on the data type (Cowell and Flachaire, 2021) and on the specific inequality measure. It could be the mean—what everyone would have if there were to be perfect equality and if lump‐sum transfers were possible.…”

Section: Inequality: An Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality Measurement and The Rich: Why Inequality Increased More Than We Thought

Cowell

Flachaire

2023

Review of Income and Wealth

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To compare income and wealth distributions and to assess the effects of policy that affect those distributions require reliable inequality‐measurement tools. However, commonly used inequality measures such as the Gini coefficient have an apparently counter‐intuitive property: income growth among the rich may actually reduce measured inequality. We show that there are just two inequality measures that both avoid this anomalous behavior and satisfy the principle of transfers. We further show that the recent increases in US income inequality are understated by the conventional Gini coefficient and explain why a simple alternative inequality measure should be preferred in practice.

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Section: Inequality: An Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality Measurement and The Rich: Why Inequality Increased More Than We Thought

Cowell

Flachaire

2023

Review of Income and Wealth

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“…)(4) 𝐴𝑢𝑔𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑡ℎ = (𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑡ℎ − 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠) + 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 + 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 (e.g.Wolff, 2015;Cowell et al, 2017;Bönke et al, 2020) To assess, the impact of public pension entitlements on wealth inequality scholars compare the value of inequality measures calculated for the distribution of augmented wealth and the distribution of private wealth. In recent years, an increasing number of studies use inequality decomposition techniques [seeCowell, 2011, Cowell andFlachaire, 2021 for a discussion on inequality measurement and decomposition]…”

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confidence: 99%

Inequality and Public Pension Entitlements

Sierminska

Wroński

2023

Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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The literature on wealth inequality is expanding very fast. Wealth is usually more concentrated than income. However, traditional measures of wealth inequality are based only on private wealth, and thus exclude public pension entitlements. In this chapter, the literature on the impact of public pension entitlements on wealth inequality is discussed. Empirical research shows, that wealth inequality is significantly reduced after accounting for public pension wealth. The value of Gini index is usually reduced by 20 -40%.

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The measurement of health inequalities: does status matter?

Costa‐Font

Cowell

2021

J Econ Inequal

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Approaches to measuring health inequalities are often problematic because they use methods that are inappropriate for categorical data. In this paper we focus on “pure” or univariate health inequality (rather than income-related or bivariate health inequality) and use a concept of individual status that allows a consistent treatment of such data. We take alternative versions of the status concept and apply methods for treating categorical data to examine self-assessed health inequality for the countries included in the World Health Survey. We also use regression analysis on the apparent determinants of these health inequality estimates. We show that the status concept that is used will affect health-inequality rankings across countries and the way health inequality is related to countries’ median health, income, demographics and governance.

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Inequality Measurement: Methods and Data

Cited by 3 publications

References 75 publications

Inequality Measurement and The Rich: Why Inequality Increased More Than We Thought

Inequality Measurement and The Rich: Why Inequality Increased More Than We Thought

Inequality and Public Pension Entitlements

The measurement of health inequalities: does status matter?

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