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Assessing The Effects Of Wives' Earnings On Family Income Inequality

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Author Info
Maria Cancian
Deborah Reed

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Abstract

We argue that the effect of wives' earnings can be assessed meaningfully only by comparing the observed distribution of income with a reference distribution. The components of the standard decomposition of the Gini coefficient have no implicit reference distribution and therefore should not be interpreted as a measure of the effect of an income source on inequality. We suggest several intuitive counterfactual reference distributions and illustrate their use with 1979 and 1989 U.S. data. We conclude that wives' earnings reduced inequality in that the income distribution would have been less equal in their absence. Alternative measures of the impact have mixed results. © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog

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Publisher Info
Article provided by MIT Press in its journal The Review of Economics and Statistics.

Volume (Year): 80 (1998)
Issue (Month): 1 (February)
Pages: 73-79
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Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:80:y:1998:i:1:p:73-79

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  1. Stéphane Mussard, 2006. "La décomposition des mesures d’inégalité en sources de revenu : l’indice de Gini et les généralisations," Cahiers de recherche 06-05, Departement d'Economique de la Faculte d'administration à l'Universite de Sherbrooke. [Downloadable!]
  2. Wan, Guanghua & Lu, Ming & Chen, Zhao, 2006. "Globalization and Regional Income Inequality: Empirical evidence from within China," Working Papers RP2006/139, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Iulie Aslaksen, Tom Wennemo and Rolf Aaberge, 2000. ""Birds of a Feather Flock Together" The Impact of Choice of Spouse on Family Labor Income Inequality," Discussion Papers 276, Research Department of Statistics Norway. [Downloadable!]
  4. Wan, Guanghua, 2007. "Regional Income Inequality in Rural China, 1985-2002: Trends, Causes and Policy Implications," Working Papers UNU-WIDER Research Paper , World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). [Downloadable!]
  5. M. Dolores Collado & Alfonso Alba Ramírez, 1999. "- Do Wives Earnings Contribute To Reduce Income Inequality?: Evidence From Spain," Working Papers. Serie AD 1999-11, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie). [Downloadable!]
  6. Mary C. Daly & Robert G. Valletta, 2000. "Inequality and poverty in the United States: the effects of changing family behavior and rising wage dispersion," Working Papers in Applied Economic Theory 2000-06, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. [Downloadable!]
  7. Mercedes Sastre & Alain Trannoy, 2002. "Shapley inequality decomposition by factor components: Some methodological issues," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 51-89, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Oddbjørn Raaum & Bernt Bratsberg & Knut Røed & Eva Österbacka & Tor Eriksson & Markus Jäntti & Robin Naylor, 2007. "Marital Sorting, Household Labor Supply, and Intergenerational Earnings Mobility across Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 3037, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  9. Miguel Székely & Marianne Hilgert, 2000. "¿Qué hay detrás de las diferencias en la desigualdad entre los países?," RES Working Papers 4244, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. [Downloadable!]
  10. Wan, Guanghua, 2006. "Poverty Accounting by Factor Components: With an Empirical Illustration Using Chinese Data," Working Papers RP2006/63, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). [Downloadable!]
  11. John Pencavel, 2006. "Earnings Inequality and Market Work in Husband-Wife Families," IZA Discussion Papers 2235, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  12. Miguel Székely & Marianne Hilgert, 2000. "What Drives Differences in Inequality Across Countries?," RES Working Papers 4243, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. [Downloadable!]
  13. Mary C. Daly & Robert G. Valletta, 2000. "Changing Family Behavior and the U.S. Income Distribution," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1640, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
  14. R. D. Plotnick & E. Smolensky & E. Evenhouse & S. Reilly, . "The Twentieth Century Record of Inequality and Poverty in the United States," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1166-98, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. [Downloadable!]
  15. Rocio Sánchez-Mangas & Virginia Sánchez-Marcos, . "Reconciling female labor participation and motherhood: the effect of benefits for working mothers," Studies on the Spanish Economy 195, FEDEA. [Downloadable!]
  16. Janet Currie & Aaron S. Yelowitz, 1999. "Health Insurance and Less Skilled Workers," JCPR Working Papers 63, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    Other versions:
  17. E. Schechtman & S. Yitzhaki, 2003. "A Family of Correlation Coefficients Based on the Extended Gini Index," Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 129-146, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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