This paper develops methods for decomposing changes in the income distribution using subgroup decompositions of the income density function. Overall changes are related to changes in subgroup shares and changes in subgroup densities, where the latter are broken down further using elementary transformations of individual incomes. These density decompositions are analogous to the widely-used decompositions of inequality indices by population subgroup, except that they summarize multiple features of the income distribution (using graphs), rather than focusing on a specific feature such as dispersion, and are not dependent on the choice of a specific summary index. Nonetheless, since inequality and poverty indices can be expressed as PDF functionals, our density-based methods can also be used to provide numerical decompositions of these. An application of the methods reveals the multi-faceted nature of UK income distribution trends during the 1980s.
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Length: 24 pages Date of creation: Apr 2004 Date of revision: Publication status: Published in Journal of Economic Inequality,2005, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 43-61 Handle: RePEc:irs:iriswp:2004-07
Find related papers by JEL classification: C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution D33 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Factor Income Distribution
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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.:
Cowell, F.A., 2000.
"Measurement of inequality,"
Handbook of Income Distribution,
in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 87-166
Elsevier.
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