IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/3699.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Half a world : regional inequality in five great federations

Author

Listed:
  • Milanovic, Branko

Abstract

Thepaper studies regional (spatial) inequality in the five most populous countries in the world: China, India, the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil in the period 1980-2000. They are all federations or quasi-federations composed of entities with substantial economic autonomy. Two types of regional inequalities are considered: Concept 1 inequality, which is inequality between mean incomes (GDP per capita) of states/provinces, and Concept 2 inequality, which is inequality between population-weighted regional mean incomes. The first inequality speaks to the issue of regional convergence, the second, to the issue of overall inequality as perceived by citizens within a nation. All three Asian countries show rising inequality in terms of both concepts in the 1990s. Divergence in income outcomes is particularly noticeable for the most populous states/provinces in China and India. The United States, where regional inequality is the least, shows further convergence. Brazil, with the highest level of regional inequality, displays no trend. A regression analysis fails to establish robust association between the usual macroeconomic variables and the two types of regional inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Milanovic, Branko, 2005. "Half a world : regional inequality in five great federations," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3699, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3699
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2005/08/30/000016406_20050830161631/Rendered/PDF/wps3699.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Branko Milanovic, 2002. "True World Income Distribution, 1988 and 1993: First Calculation Based on Household Surveys Alone," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(476), pages 51-92, January.
    2. Paul Krugman & Anthony J. Venables, 1995. "Globalization and the Inequality of Nations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(4), pages 857-880.
    3. Takahiro Akita, 2002. "Income Inequality in Indonesia," Working Papers EMS_2002_02, Research Institute, International University of Japan.
    4. Carsten A. Holz, 2004. "China's Statistical System in Transition: Challenges, Data Problems, and Institutional Innovations," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 50(3), pages 381-409, September.
    5. Scharping, Thomas, 2001. "Hide-and-seek: China's elusive population data," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 323-332.
    6. Yao, Shujie & Zhang, Zongyi, 2001. "On Regional Inequality and Diverging Clubs: A Case Study of Contemporary China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 466-484, September.
    7. Parks, Richard W, 1978. "Inflation and Relative Price Variability," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(1), pages 79-95, February.
    8. Dabus, Carlos, 2000. "Inflationary regimes and relative price variability: evidence from Argentina," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 535-547, August.
    9. Ajit S. Bhalla & Shujie Yao & Zongyi Zhang, 2003. "Causes of inequalities in China, 1952 to 1999," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(8), pages 939-955.
    10. Anthony Shorrocks & Guanghua Wan, 2005. "Spatial decomposition of inequality," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 59-81, January.
    11. N/A, 1970. "Note," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 2(4), pages 1-1, October.
    12. Xiaobo Zhang & Kevin Zhang, 2003. "How Does Globalisation Affect Regional Inequality within A Developing Country? Evidence from China," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 47-67.
    13. Akita, Takahiro & Kawamura, Kazumi, 2002. "Regional income inequality in China and Indonesia: A comparative analysis," ERSA conference papers ersa02p432, European Regional Science Association.
    14. Carlos R. Azzoni, 2001. "Economic growth and regional income inequality in Brazil," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 35(1), pages 133-152.
    15. Bliss, Christopher, 1999. "Galton's Fallacy and Economic Convergence," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(1), pages 4-14, January.
    16. repec:hhs:iuiwop:430 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Mitsuhiko Kataoka & Takahiro Akita, 2003. "Regional Income Inequality in the Post-War Japan," ERSA conference papers ersa03p480, European Regional Science Association.
    18. Rati Ram, 1992. "Interstate Income Inequality In The United States: Measurement, Modelling And Some Characteristics," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 38(1), pages 39-48, March.
    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. Nissanke, Machiko & Thorbecke, Erik, 2006. "Channels and policy debate in the globalization-inequality-poverty nexus," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1338-1360, August.
    2. Ezcurra, Roberto & Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés, 2013. "Does Economic Globalization affect Regional Inequality? A Cross-country Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 92-103.
    3. Naranpanawa, Athula & Arora, Rashmi, 2014. "Does Trade Liberalization Promote Regional Disparities? Evidence from a Multiregional CGE Model of India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 339-349.
    4. Breinlich, Holger & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2014. "Regional Growth and Regional Decline," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 4, pages 683-779, Elsevier.
    5. Raul M. Silveira-Neto & Carlos R. Azzoni, 2012. "Social Policy As Regional Policy: Market And Nonmarket Factors Determining Regional Inequality," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 433-450, August.
    6. Facchini, Giovanni & Testa, Cecilia, 2008. "Fiscal decentralization, regional inequality and bail-outs: Lessons from Brazil's debt crisis," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 333-344, May.
    7. repec:dau:papers:123456789/284 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Ashwini Deshpande, 2007. "Overlapping Identities under Liberalization: Gender and Caste in India," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 735-760, July.
    9. Lu, Jiangyong & Liu, Xiaohui & Filatotchev, Igor & Wright, Mike, 2014. "The impact of domestic diversification and top management teams on the international diversification of Chinese firms," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 455-467.

    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. Julie A. Silva, 2013. "Rural Income Inequality in Mozambique: National Dynamics and Local Experiences?," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 43(1), pages 23-50, Summer.
    2. Abdul Jabbar Abdullah & Hristos Doucouliagos & Elizabeth Manning, 2015. "Are regional incomes in Malaysia converging?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94, pages 69-94, November.
    3. Tsun Se Cheong & Yanrui Wu, 2013. "Globalization and Regional Inequality," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 13-10, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    4. 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.
    5. Ethan Ligon, 2007. "Risk and the Evolution of Inequality in China in an Era of Globalization," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization and Poverty, pages 599-628, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Iris Claus & Les Oxley & Chen Wang & Guanghua Wan & Dan Yang, 2014. "Income Inequality In The People'S Republic Of China: Trends, Determinants, And Proposed Remedies," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 686-708, September.
    7. Rui Hao & Zheng Wei, 2009. "Measuring inter-provincial income inequality in China: a sensitivity analysis," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 55-76.
    8. Liu, Tung & Li, Kui-Wai, 2006. "Disparity in factor contributions between coastal and inner provinces in post-reform China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 449-470.
    9. María Ángeles Caraballo & Carlos Dabús., 2008. "The Determinants of Relative Price Variability: Further Evidence from Argentina," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 45(132), pages 235-255.
    10. Kailei Wei & Shujie Yao & Aying Liu, 2007. "Foreign direct investment and regional inequality in China," Discussion Papers 07/32, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    11. Chi-Young Choi, 2010. "Reconsidering the Relationship between Inflation and Relative Price Variability," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(5), pages 769-798, August.
    12. Muhammad Shahbaz & Mita Bhattacharya & Mantu Kumar Mahalik, 2017. "Finance and income inequality in Kazakhstan: evidence since transition with policy suggestions," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(52), pages 5337-5351, November.
    13. Andrés Langebaek & Eliana González M., 2007. "Inflación Y Precios Relativos En Colombia," Borradores de Economia 4248, Banco de la Republica.
    14. Elliott, Robert J.R. & Zhou, Ying, 2015. "Co-location and Spatial Wage Spillovers in China: The Role of Foreign Ownership and Trade," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 629-644.
    15. Dezhong Duan & Yang Zhang & Ying Chen & Debin Du, 2019. "Regional Integration in the Inter-City Technology Transfer System of the Yangtze River Delta, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-19, May.
    16. Michel DIMOU, 2008. "Urbanisation, Agglomeration Effects And Regional Inequality : An Introduction," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 27, pages 7-12.
    17. Nicole Madariaga & Sylvie Montout & Patrice Ollivaud, 2004. "Regional convergence, trade liberalization and agglomeration of activities: an analysis of NAFTA and MERCOSUR cases," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques bla04069, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    18. Cleomar Gomes da Silva & Gilberto O. Boaretto, 2018. "Inflation and Relative Price Variability in Brazil: A Time-Varying Parameter Approach," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(4), pages 1947-1956.
    19. Cheong, Tsun Se & Wu, Yanrui, 2013. "Regional disparity, transitional dynamics and convergence in China," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 1-14.
    20. Huaqun Li & Kingsley Haynes, 2012. "Foreign direct investment and China's regional inequality in the era of new regional development strategy," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(3), pages 279-300, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Governance Indicators; Poverty Impact Evaluation; Rural Poverty Reduction; Services&Transfers to Poor;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wbk:wbrwps:3699. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.