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How Has the Literature on Gini's Index Evolved in the Past 80 Years?

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Author Info
Kuan Xu () (Department of Economics, Dalhousie University)

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Abstract

The Gini coefficient or index is perhaps one of the most used indicators of social and economic conditions. From its first proposal in English in 1921 to the present, a large number of papers on the Gini index has been written and published. Going through these papers represents a demanding task. The aim of this survey paper is to help the reader to navigate through the major developments of the literature and to incorporate recent theoretical research results with a particular focus on different formulations and interpretations of the Gini index, its social welfare implication, and source and subgroup decomposition.

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File URL: http://www.economics.dal.ca/RePEc/dal/wparch/howgini.pdf
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Paper provided by Dalhousie, Department of Economics in its series Department of Economics at Dalhousie University working papers archive with number howgini.

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Length: 41 pages
Date of creation: 30 Jun 2003
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Handle: RePEc:dal:wparch:howgini

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Related research
Keywords: Gini coefficent or index; social welfare; decomposition; computation;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General
I00 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General - - - General

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Biewen, Martin, 2002. "Bootstrap inference for inequality, mobility and poverty measurement," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 317-342, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Mookherjee, Dilip & Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1982. "A Decomposition Analysis of the Trend in UK Income Inequality," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 886-902, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Shalit, Haim & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1984. " Mean-Gini, Portfolio Theory, and the Pricing of Risky Assets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(5), pages 1449-68, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Yitzhaki, Shlomo & Lerman, Robert I, 1991. "Income Stratification and Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 313-29, September.
  5. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1982. "Stochastic Dominance, Mean Variance, and Gini's Mean Difference," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 178-85, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Lerman, Robert I. & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1984. "A note on the calculation and interpretation of the Gini index," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 15(3-4), pages 363-368. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Dorfman, Robert, 1979. "A Formula for the Gini Coefficient," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 61(1), pages 146-49, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Osberg, L & Xu, K, 1997. "International Comparisons of Poverty Intensity : Index Decomposition and Bootstrap Inference," Department of Economics at Dalhousie University working papers archive 97-03, Dalhousie, Department of Economics.
  9. Pyatt, Graham, 1976. "On the Interpretation and Disaggregation of Gini Coefficients," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 86(342), pages 243-55, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1994. "Economic distance and overlapping of distributions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 147-159, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Gastwirth, Joseph L, 1972. "The Estimation of the Lorenz Curve and Gini Index," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 54(3), pages 306-16, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Das, T & Parikh, A, 1982. "Decomposition of Inequality Measures and a Comparative Analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 7(1-2), pages 23-48.
  13. Silber, Jacques, 1989. "Factor Components, Population Subgroups and the Computation of the Gini Index of Inequality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(1), pages 107-15, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Shalit, Haim, 1985. "Calculating the Gini Index of Inequality for Individual Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 47(2), pages 185-89, May.
  15. Kuan Xu & Lars Osberg, 2002. "The social welfare implications, decomposability, and geometry of the Sen family of poverty indices," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 35(1), pages 138-152, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Silber, Jacques, 1993. "Inequality Decomposition by Income," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(3), pages 545-47, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1984. "Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1369-85, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Xu, Kuan, 2000. "Inference for Generalized Gini Indices Using the Iterated-Bootstrap Method," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 18(2), pages 223-27, April.
  19. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1978. "Measures of relative equality and their meaning in terms of social welfare," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 59-80, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Cowell, Frank A, 1988. "Inequality Decomposition: Three Bad Measures," Bulletin of Economic Research, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(4), pages 309-12, October.
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Maria Manuela Nêveda Da Costa & Jianjun Ji, 2004. "Rural-Urban Economic Disparities among China’s Elderly," ERSA conference papers ersa04p444, European Regional Science Association. [Downloadable!]
  2. Reuter & Ulrich, 2004. "The Effects of Intraregional Disparities on Regional Development in China: Inequality Decomposition and Panel-Data Analysis," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 716, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
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