IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vrs/eaiada/v22y2018i4p43-64n3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income Inequality of Households in Poland: A Subgroup Decomposition of Generalized Entropy Measures

Author

Listed:
  • Muszyńska Joanna

    (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Torun, Poland)

  • Wędrowska Ewa

    (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Torun, Poland)

Abstract

A formula of measures applied to assess the level of income inequality results from the intellectual basis on which this approach is founded. Our paper focuses on Generalized Entropy measures. The aim of our paper is two-fold. Firstly, it aims at presenting GE measures and discussing their properties, especially the property of additive decomposition. Secondly, the empirical aim is to assess the level of income inequality in Poland and to indicate its main determinants. In the study we use microdata obtained from EU-SILC that cover information about incomes received by individual household members in 2016. Five factors are chosen as the possible drivers of income inequality. The study proves the characteristics related to human capital are the most influential factors of income variability between households. The characteristics describing the composition of the household contribute to the overall level of inequality to asmaller extent.

Suggested Citation

  • Muszyńska Joanna & Wędrowska Ewa, 2018. "Income Inequality of Households in Poland: A Subgroup Decomposition of Generalized Entropy Measures," Econometrics. Advances in Applied Data Analysis, Sciendo, vol. 22(4), pages 43-64, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:vrs:eaiada:v:22:y:2018:i:4:p:43-64:n:3
    DOI: 10.15611/eada.2018.4.03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.15611/eada.2018.4.03
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.15611/eada.2018.4.03?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cowell, Frank A. & Kuga, Kiyoshi, 1981. "Additivity and the entropy concept: An axiomatic approach to inequality measurement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 131-143, August.
    2. Shorrocks, A F, 1980. "The Class of Additively Decomposable Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(3), pages 613-625, April.
    3. Stephen P. Jenkins & Michael O'Higgins, 1989. "Inequality Measurement Using ‘Norm Incomes’: Were Garvy And Paglin Onto Something After All?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 35(3), pages 265-282, September.
    4. Bourguignon, Francois, 1979. "Decomposable Income Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(4), pages 901-920, July.
    5. Magdalou, Brice & Nock, Richard, 2011. "Income distributions and decomposable divergence measures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2440-2454.
    6. Charles Blackorby & David Donaldson & Maria Auersperg, 1981. "A New Procedure for the Measurement of Inequality within and among Population Subgroups," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 14(4), pages 665-685, November.
    7. Frank A. Cowell, 1980. "On the Structure of Additive Inequality Measures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(3), pages 521-531.
    8. Frank A. Cowell, 1985. "Measures of Distributional Change: An Axiomatic Approach," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(1), pages 135-151.
    9. Alari Paulus, 2004. "Income Inequality and its Decomposition: the Case of Estonia," University of Tartu - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, in: Tiiu Paas & Egle Tafenau (ed.), Modelling the Economies of the Baltic Sea Region, edition 1, volume 17, chapter 7, pages 206-235, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu (Estonia).
    10. Chris Elbers & Peter Lanjouw & Johan Mistiaen & Berk Özler, 2008. "Reinterpreting between-group inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(3), pages 231-245, September.
    11. Márton Medgyesi, 2014. "Components of income inequality and its change in EU countries, 2004-2010," ImPRovE Working Papers 14/01, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    12. Kimhi, Ayal, 2011. "Comment: On the Interpretation (and Misinterpretation) of Inequality Decompositions by Income Sources," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 1888-1890.
    13. Frank Cowell, 2005. "Theil, Inequality Indices and Decomposition," Working Papers 01, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    14. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1984. "Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1369-1385, November.
    15. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2009. "Distributionally‐Sensitive Inequality Indices And The Gb2 Income Distribution," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(2), pages 392-398, June.
    16. Nicholas Rohde, 2008. "Lorenz Curves and Generalised Entropy Inequality Measures," Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion, and Well-Being, in: Duangkamon Chotikapanich (ed.), Modeling Income Distributions and Lorenz Curves, chapter 15, pages 271-283, Springer.
    17. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2003:i:29:p:1-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Mª Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Marta Urrutia, 2003. "A new factorial decomposition for the atkinson measure," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(29), pages 1-12.
    19. James E. Foster & Artyom A. Shneyerov, 1999. "A general class of additively decomposable inequality measures," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 14(1), pages 89-111.
    20. Shorrocks, A F, 1982. "Inequality Decomposition by Factor Components," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 193-211, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Magdalou, Brice & Nock, Richard, 2011. "Income distributions and decomposable divergence measures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2440-2454.
    2. Francisco J. Goerlich-Gisbert & Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Marta Urrutia, 2009. "The ‘extended’ Atkinson family and changes in the expenditure distribution. Spain 1973/74-2003," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 18(1), pages 20-41, March.
    3. Frank Cowell & Carlo Fiorio, 2011. "Inequality decompositions—a reconciliation," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 509-528, December.
    4. Frank Cowell & Carlo V. Fiorio, 2010. "GINI DP 4: Inequality Decompositions," GINI Discussion Papers 4, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    5. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia, 2008. "The ‘Extended’ Atkinson family: The class of multiplicatively decomposable inequality measures, and some new graphical procedures for analysts," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(2), pages 211-225, June.
    6. Muszyńska Joanna & Oczki Jarosław & Wędrowska Ewa, 2018. "Income Inequality in Poland and the United Kingdom. Decomposition of the Theil Index," Folia Oeconomica Stetinensia, Sciendo, vol. 18(1), pages 108-122, June.
    7. Judith Clarke & Nilanjana Roy, 2012. "On statistical inference for inequality measures calculated from complex survey data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 499-524, October.
    8. Tugce, Cuhadaroglu, 2013. "My Group Beats Your Group: Evaluating Non-Income Inequalities," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-49, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    9. Satya Chakravarty, 2001. "The Variance as a subgroup decomposable measure of inequality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 79-95, January.
    10. Foster, James E. & Shneyerov, Artyom A., 2000. "Path Independent Inequality Measures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 199-222, April.
    11. Ebert, Udo, 2010. "The decomposition of inequality reconsidered: Weakly decomposable measures," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 94-103, September.
    12. Frank A Cowell, 2003. "Theil, Inequality and the Structure of Income Distribution," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 67, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    13. Tugce Cuhadaroglu, 2013. "My Group Beats Your Group: Evaluating Non-Income Inequalities," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201308, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    14. I. Josa & A. Aguado, 2020. "Measuring Unidimensional Inequality: Practical Framework for the Choice of an Appropriate Measure," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 541-570, June.
    15. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia & Oscar Volij, 2011. "An Axiomatic Characterization Of The Theil Inequality Order," Working Papers 1103, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    16. Teixidó Figueras, Jordi & Duro Moreno, Juan Antonio, 2012. "Ecological Footprint Inequality: A methodological review and some results," Working Papers 2072/203168, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    17. Satya R. Chakravarty & Pietro Muliere, 2003. "Welfare indicators: A review and new perspectives. 1. Measurement of inequality," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 457-497.
    18. Arthur Charpentier & Stéphane Mussard, 2011. "Income inequality games," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 529-554, December.
    19. Satya Chakravarty & Swami Tyagarupananda, 2009. "The subgroup decomposable intermediate indices of inequality," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 83-97, June.
    20. Chris Elbers & Peter Lanjouw & Johan Mistiaen & Berk Özler, 2008. "Reinterpreting between-group inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(3), pages 231-245, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    income inequality; General Entropy measures; decomposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - General

    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:vrs:eaiada:v:22:y:2018:i:4:p:43-64:n:3. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.com .

    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.