IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/vuw/vuwcpf/20253.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income inequality in New Zealand, 1935 – 2014

Author

Listed:
  • Creedy, John
  • Gemmell, Norman
  • Nguyen, Loc

Abstract

Trends in income inequality are increasingly being examined and discussed by economists and policy makers both in New Zealand and globally. In the case of New Zealand, it is known that income inequality indices, such as the Gini index, increased during the late 1980s and early 1990s, with limited change thereafter. But with most data series beginning in the early 1980s, little is known about the levels and changes of such indices over prior decades. Based on previously unexplored data from Statistics New Zealand Official Yearbooks and Inland Revenue, this paper reports estimates for the Gini index of income inequality for New Zealand from the mid-1930s to the present. They are then compared with similar Gini estimates for Australia for 1942-2001 where some remarkable commonalities are found. The paper describes the methodology used to calculate the index and reports Gini indices for incomes for individuals before tax and, where available, after tax, and separately for male and female incomes from 1981.

Suggested Citation

  • Creedy, John & Gemmell, Norman & Nguyen, Loc, 2017. "Income inequality in New Zealand, 1935 – 2014," Working Paper Series 20253, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:vuw:vuwcpf:20253
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/20253
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter Saunders, 1994. "Rising on the Tasman Tide: Income Inequality in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s," Discussion Papers 0049, University of New South Wales, Social Policy Research Centre.
    2. Lewis Evans & Arthur Grimes & Bryce Wilkinson, 1996. "Economic Reform in New Zealand 1984-95: The Pursuit of Efficiency," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 1856-1902, December.
    3. Kerry Papps, 2010. "Earnings inequality and gender in New Zealand, 1998-2008," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(3), pages 217-229.
    4. Podder, Nripesh & Chatterjee, Srikanta, 2002. "Sharing the national cake in post reform New Zealand: income inequality trends in terms of income sources," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 1-27, October.
    5. Christopher Ball & John Creedy, 2016. "Inequality in New Zealand 1983/84 to 2012/13," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(3), pages 323-342, September.
    6. Andrew Leigh, 2005. "Deriving Long‐Run Inequality Series from Tax Data," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 81(s1), pages 58-70, August.
    7. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    8. Noel Gaston & Gulasekaran Rajaguru, 2009. "The Long‐run Determinants of Australian Income Inequality," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 85(270), pages 260-275, September.
    9. John Creedy, 1997. "Inequality, mobility and income distribution comparisons," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 18(3), pages 293-302, August.
    10. Alex Bakker & John Creedy, 1999. "Macroeconomic variables and income inequality in New Zealand: An exploration using conditional mixture distributions," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 59-79.
    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. Katharine S. E. Cresswell Riol & Sean Connelly, 2023. "Beyond a neoliberal critique of hunger: a genealogy of food charity in Aotearoa New Zealand," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 1221-1238, September.

    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. John Creedy & Norman Gemmell & Loc Nguyen, 2018. "Income Inequality in New Zealand, 1935–2014," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 51(1), pages 21-40, March.
    2. John Creedy & Norman Gemmell & Loc Nguyen, 2018. "Income Inequality in New Zealand, 1935–2014," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 51(1), pages 21-40, March.
    3. Ball, Christopher & Creedy, John, 2015. "Inequality in New Zealand 1983/84 to 2013/14," Working Paper Series 19330, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    4. A. B. Atkinson & Andrew Leigh, 2005. "The Distribution of Top Incomes in New Zealand," CEPR Discussion Papers 503, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    5. Zelda Okatch & Abu Siddique & Anu Rammohan, 2013. "Determinants of Income Inequality in Botswana," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 13-15, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    6. Nolan, Matt, 2018. "Income Tax and Transfer Policy Changes in New Zealand: 1988-2013," Working Paper Series 20839, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    7. Chatterjee, Srikanta & Dalziel, Paul & Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Podder, Nripesh, 2008. "Income Inequality and Transformation of the Welfare State: A Comparative Study of the Reforms in New Zealand and Sweden," HUI Working Papers 20, HUI Research.
    8. Papps, Kerry L., 2004. "Income Inequality and Gender in New Zealand, 1998-2003," IZA Discussion Papers 1365, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. John Creedy & Elin Halvorsen & Thor O. Thoresen, 2013. "Inequality Comparisons In A Multi-Period Framework: The Role Of Alternative Welfare Metrics," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(2), pages 235-249, June.
    10. John Creedy & Elin Halvorsen & Thor O. Thoresen, 2013. "Inequality Comparisons In A Multi-Period Framework: The Role Of Alternative Welfare Metrics," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(2), pages 235-249, June.
    11. Peter Gottschalk & Timothy Smeeding, 1995. "Cross National Comparisons of Levels and Trends in Inequality," LIS Working papers 126, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    12. Srikanta Chatterjee & Nripesh Podder, 2007. "Some Ethnic Dimensions of Income Distribution from Pre‐ to Post‐reform New Zealand, 1984–1998," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 83(262), pages 275-286, September.
    13. Podder, Nripesh & Chatterjee, Srikanta, 2002. "Sharing the national cake in post reform New Zealand: income inequality trends in terms of income sources," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 1-27, October.
    14. Nicholas Biddle & Maxine Montaigne, 2017. "Income Inequality in Australia – Decomposing by City and Suburb," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 36(4), pages 367-379, December.
    15. Christopher Ball & John Creedy, 2015. "Inequality in New Zealand 1983/84 to 2013/14," Treasury Working Paper Series 15/06, New Zealand Treasury.
    16. Ashantha Ranasinghe & Xuejuan Su, 2023. "When social assistance meets market power: A mixed duopoly view of health insurance in the United States," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 851-869, October.
    17. Eckstein, Zvi & Zilcha, Itzhak, 1994. "The effects of compulsory schooling on growth, income distribution and welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 339-359, July.
    18. Evans, Lewis & Meade, Richard, 2005. "The Role and Significance of Cooperatives in New Zealand Agriculture, A Comparative Institutional Analysis," Working Paper Series 3847, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    19. Roobavannan, M. & Kandasamy, J. & Pande, S. & Vigneswaran, S. & Sivapalan, M., 2020. "Sustainability of agricultural basin development under uncertain future climate and economic conditions: A socio-hydrological analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    20. Alessandro Spiganti, 2022. "Wealth Inequality and the Exploration of Novel Alternatives," Working Papers 2022:02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".

    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:vuw:vuwcpf:20253. 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: Library Technology Services (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fcvuwnz.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.