IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ses/arsjes/2004-ii-5.html

Income Inequality and Mobility: A Nonparametric Decomposition Analysis by Age for Switzerland in the 80s and 90s

Author

Listed:
  • Boris A. Zürcher

Abstract

This paper investigates income inequality and mobility for the prime age working population of Switzerland in the early 80s and 90s. The empirical methods applied are based on nonparametric kernel density estimation. Mobility is interpreted here in terms of inequality reduction when the accounting period for income is extended. We find that income inequality increased between the early 80s and early 90s. The computation of within inequality reveals that age explains a significant fraction of total inequality. An important component of inequality is due to short-term deviations from the long-run income profile. Mobility in the sense of inequality reduction has declined for market income, but in turn increased for disposable income.

Suggested Citation

  • Boris A. Zürcher, 2004. "Income Inequality and Mobility: A Nonparametric Decomposition Analysis by Age for Switzerland in the 80s and 90s," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 140(II), pages 265-292, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ses:arsjes:2004-ii-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sjes.ch/papers/2004-II-5.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gottschalk, Peter & Smeeding, Timothy M., 2000. "Empirical evidence on income inequality in industrialized countries," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 261-307, Elsevier.
    2. Hardle, Wolfgang & Linton, Oliver, 1986. "Applied nonparametric methods," Handbook of Econometrics, in: R. F. Engle & D. McFadden (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 38, pages 2295-2339, Elsevier.
    3. Shorrocks, A F, 1978. "The Measurement of Mobility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(5), pages 1013-1024, September.
    4. Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Zandvakili, Sourushe, 1990. "Generalized entropy measures of mobility for different sexes and income levels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1-2), pages 121-133.
    5. Shorrocks, Anthony, 1978. "Income inequality and income mobility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 376-393, December.
    6. Maasoumi, Esfandiar, 1986. "The Measurement and Decomposition of Multi-dimensional Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(4), pages 991-997, July.
    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. Patrick A. Puhani, 2005. "Relative Supply and Demand for Skills in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 141(IV), pages 555-584, December.

    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. Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 1997. "Income mobility, permutations, and rerankings," UC3M Working papers. Economics 6070, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    2. Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2004. "The measurement of structural and exchange income mobility," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 2(3), pages 219-228, September.
    3. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Jäntti, Markus, 2013. "Income mobility," ISER Working Paper Series 2013-23, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    4. C. Schluter & D. Van De Gaer, 2003. "Mobility as distributional difference," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 03/182, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    5. Gary Fields, 2010. "Does income mobility equalize longer-term incomes? New measures of an old concept," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(4), pages 409-427, December.
    6. Paul Gregg & Claudia Vittori, 2008. "Exploring Shorrocks Mobility Indices Using European Data," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 08/206, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    7. Kai-yuen Tsui, 2009. "Measurement of income mobility: a re-examination," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 33(4), pages 629-645, November.
    8. Zandvakili, Sourushe, 2000. "Dynamics of earnings inequality among female-headed households in the United States," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 73-89.
    9. Duro, Juan Antonio, 2013. "International mobility in carbon dioxide emissions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 208-216.
    10. David Cantarero & Marta Pascual, 2005. "Regional Differences In Health In Spain - An Empirical Analysis," ERSA conference papers ersa05p551, European Regional Science Association.
    11. David Aristei & Cristiano Perugini, 2022. "Credit and income mobility in Russia," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 639-669, September.
    12. Frank A Cowell & Christian Schluter, 1998. "Measuring Income Mobility with Dirty Data (published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(3), May 1999)," CASE Papers 016, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    13. Hochguertel, Stefan & Ohlsson, Henry, 2012. "Who is at the top? Wealth mobility over the life cycle," Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies 2012:1, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    14. Magali Duque & Abigail McKnight, 2019. "Understanding the relationship between inequalities and poverty: a review of dynamic mechanisms," CASE Papers /217, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    15. Ira N. Gang & Kseniia Gatskova & John Landon-Lane & Myeong-Su Yun, 2018. "Vulnerability to Poverty: Tajikistan During and After the Global Financial Crisis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 925-951, August.
    16. Olga Cant⊙, 2000. "Income Mobility In Spain: How Much Is There?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 46(1), pages 85-102, March.
    17. Gordon Anderson & Oliver Linton & Jasmin Thomas, 2017. "Similarity, dissimilarity and exceptionality: generalizing Gini’s transvariation to measure “differentness” in many distributions," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 75(2), pages 161-180, August.
    18. Sourushe Zandvakili, 2002. "Trends in Earnings Inequality among Young Adults," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 60(1), pages 93-107.
    19. Mario Alloza, 2021. "The impact of taxes on income mobility," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(4), pages 794-854, August.
    20. Frank A Cowell & Christian Schluter, 1998. "Income Mobility: A Robust Approach (published in Income Inequality Measurement: From Theory to Practice, J Silber (ed, Dewenter: Kluver , 1999)," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 37, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    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:ses:arsjes:2004-ii-5. 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: Kurt Schmidheiny (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sgvssea.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.