IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/466.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The bidimensional decomposition of inequality: A nested Theil approach

Author

Listed:
  • Michele Giammatteo

Abstract

In this paper we propose a nested inequality decomposition by income sources and population subgroups derived by the Theil index. We firstly motivate our preference for its associated decomposition by income sources with respect to the axiom-based proposal of Shorrocks (1982) and the Gini-based decomposition of Lerman and Yitzhaki (1985). Then we enhance the set of desirable proprieties able to sustain that choice with the additional requirement of subgroup decomposability. The nested decomposition of the Theil index allows the overall level of inequality to be function of only three types of factors: source-group income and population shares; source-group inequality. Finally, using LIS micro data on incomes, we apply it to the case of geographical disaggregation of inequality in Italy between 1989 and 2000.

Suggested Citation

  • Michele Giammatteo, 2007. "The bidimensional decomposition of inequality: A nested Theil approach," LIS Working papers 466, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:466
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/466.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul, Satya, 2004. "Income sources effects on inequality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 435-451, February.
    2. Shorrocks, A F, 1980. "The Class of Additively Decomposable Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(3), pages 613-625, April.
    3. 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.
    4. Stark, Oded & Taylor, J Edward & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1986. "Remittances and Inequality," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 96(383), pages 722-740, September.
    5. Lambert, Peter J & Aronson, J Richard, 1993. "Inequality Decomposition Analysis and the Gini Coefficient Revisited," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(420), pages 1221-1227, September.
    6. Yitzhaki, Shlomo & Lerman, Robert I, 1991. "Income Stratification and Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 37(3), pages 313-329, September.
    7. Giovanni D'Alessio & Andrea Brandolini, 2001. "Household Structure and Income Inequality," LIS Working papers 254, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    8. Jonathan Morduch & Terry Sicular, 2002. "Rethinking Inequality Decomposition, With Evidence from Rural China," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(476), pages 93-106, January.
    9. Ravi Kanbur, 2006. "The policy significance of inequality decompositions," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 4(3), pages 367-374, December.
    10. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1984. "Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1369-1385, November.
    11. Joseph Deutsch & Jacques Silber, 2004. "Measuring the Impact of Various Income Sources on the Link between Inequality and Development: Implications for the Kuznets Curve," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(1), pages 110-127, February.
    12. Podder, Nripesh & Mukhopadhaya, Pundarik, 2001. "The Changing Pattern of," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 77(238), pages 242-251, September.
    13. Nripesh Podder, 1993. "The Disaggregation Of The Gin1 Coefficient By Factor Components And Its Applications To Australia," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 39(1), pages 51-61, March.
    14. Wan, Guang Hua, 2001. "Changes in regional inequality in rural China: decomposing the Gini index by income sources," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 45(3), pages 1-21.
    15. Takahiro Akita, 2003. "Decomposing regional income inequality in China and Indonesia using two-stage nested Theil decomposition method," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 37(1), pages 55-77, February.
    16. Stéphane Mussard & Michel Terraza & Françoise Seyte, 2003. "Decomposition of Gini and the generalized entropy inequality measures," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(7), pages 1-6.
    17. Graham Pyatt & Chau-nan Chen & John Fei, 1980. "The Distribution of Income by Factor Components," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 95(3), pages 451-473.
    18. Shorrocks, A F, 1982. "Inequality Decomposition by Factor Components," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 193-211, January.
    19. Anthony F. Shorrocks, 1983. "The Impact of Income Components on the Distribution of Family Incomes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(2), pages 311-326.
    20. Quentin T. Wodon, 1999. "Between Group Inequality And Targeted Transfers," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 45(1), pages 21-39, March.
    21. Bourguignon, Francois, 1979. "Decomposable Income Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(4), pages 901-920, July.
    22. Dagum, Camilo, 1997. "A New Approach to the Decomposition of the Gini Income Inequality Ratio," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 515-531.
    23. John C. H. Fei & Gustav Ranis & Shirley W. Y. Kuo, 1978. "Growth and the Family Distribution of Income by Factor Components," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 92(1), pages 17-53.
    24. Robert I. Lerman & Shlomo Yitzhaki, 1994. "Effect of Marginal Changes in Income Sources On U.S. Income Inequality," Public Finance Review, , vol. 22(4), pages 403-417, October.
    25. Stephane Mussard, 2004. "The bidimensional decomposition of the Gini ratio. A case study: Italy," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(8), pages 503-505.
    26. Silber, Jacques, 1993. "Inequality Decomposition by Income," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(3), pages 545-547, August.
    27. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2003:i:7:p:1-6 is not listed on IDEAS
    28. Nripesh Podder & Pundarik Mukhopadhaya, 2001. "The Changing Pattern of Sources of Income and its Impact on Inequality: The Method and its Application to Australia, 1975–94," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 77(238), pages 242-251, September.
    29. Lerman, Robert I & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1985. "Income Inequality Effects by Income," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(1), pages 151-156, February.
    30. Shlomo Yitzhaki & Robert I. Lerman, 1991. "Income Stratification And Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 37(3), pages 313-329, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2013. "Factor Components of Inequality: A Cross-Country Study," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(4), pages 689-727, December.
    2. Cecilia Garc a-Pe alosa & Richard Breen & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2008. "Factor Components of Inequality: Cross-Country Differences and Time Changes," LIS Working papers 503, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Fabio Clementi & Michele Giammatteo, 2012. "The labour market and the distribution of income: an empirical analysis for Italy," Working Papers 42-2012, Macerata University, Department of Studies on Economic Development (DiSSE), revised Jul 2014.

    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. Jurkatis, Simon & Strehl, Wolfgang, 2014. "Gini decompositions and Gini elasticities: On measuring the importance of income sources and population subgroups for income inequality," Discussion Papers 2014/22, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    2. Stéphane Mussard & Michel Terraza, 2009. "Décompositions des mesures d'inégalité : le cas des coefficients de Gini et d'entropie," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 75(2), pages 151-181.
    3. St鰨ane Mussard & Patrick Richard, 2012. "Linking Yitzhaki's and Dagum's Gini decompositions," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(23), pages 2997-3010, August.
    4. Stéphane Mussard & Françoise Seyte & Michel Terraza, 2006. "La décomposition de l’indicateur de Gini en sous-groupes : une revue de la littérature," Cahiers de recherche 06-11, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    5. Simon Jurkatis, "undated". "Dos and Don'ts of Gini Decompositions," BDPEMS Working Papers 2013003, Berlin School of Economics.
    6. Magne Mogstad, 2007. "Measuring Income Inequality under Restricted Interpersonal Comparability," Discussion Papers 498, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    7. 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.
    8. Stéphane Mussard, 2005. "On Decomposition of the Gini Index of Equality," Cahiers de recherche 05-09, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    9. C. Chameni Nembua, 2008. "The 'natural' bidimensional decomposition of inequality indices: evaluating factor contributions to households welfare inequality in Cameroon, 1996-2001," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(12), pages 963-970.
    10. St鰨ane Mussard & Luc Savard, 2012. "The Gini multi-decomposition and the role of Gini's transvariation: application to partial trade liberalization in the Philippines," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(10), pages 1235-1249, April.
    11. Carlo V. Fiorio, 2006. "Understanding Inequality Trends:Microsimulation Decomposition for Italy," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 78, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Mussard, Stéphane & Pi Alperin, Maria Noel, 2011. "Poverty growth in Scandinavian countries: A Sen multi-decomposition," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2842-2853.
    15. 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.
    16. Kimhi, Ayal, 2011. "Comment: On the Interpretation (and Misinterpretation) of Inequality Decompositions by Income Sources," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 1888-1890.
    17. Frank Cowell & Carlo V. Fiorio, 2010. "GINI DP 4: Inequality Decompositions," GINI Discussion Papers 4, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    18. Kimhi, Ayal, 2009. "Land Reform and Farm-Household Income Inequality: The Case of Georgia," Discussion Papers 54159, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Agricultural Economics and Management.
    19. Stéphane Mussard & Kuan Xu, 2006. "Multidimensional Decomposition of the Sen Index: Some Further Thoughts," Cahiers de recherche 06-08, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    20. Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Elsa Orgiazzi, 2013. "Factor Components of Inequality: A Cross-Country Study," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(4), pages 689-727, December.

    More about this item

    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:lis:liswps:466. 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: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.html .

    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.