IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tsj/stataj/y16y2016i2p264-300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing inequality using percentile shares

Author

Listed:
  • Ben Jann

    (University of Bern)

Abstract

At least since Thomas Piketty’s best-selling Capital in the Twenty- First Century (2014, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press), percentile shares have become a popular approach for analyzing distributional inequalities. In their work on the development of top incomes, Piketty and collaborators typically report top-percentage shares, using varying percentages as thresholds (top 10%, top 1%, top 0.1%, etc.). However, analysis of percentile shares at other positions in the distribution may also be of interest. In this article, I present a new command, pshare, that estimates percentile shares from individual-level data and displays the results using histograms or stacked bar charts. Copyright 2016 by StataCorp LP.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben Jann, 2016. "Assessing inequality using percentile shares," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 16(2), pages 264-300, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:tsj:stataj:y:16:y:2016:i:2:p:264-300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.stata-journal.com/article.html?article=st0432
    File Function: link to article purchase
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.stata-journal.com/software/sj16-2/st0432/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    2. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2014. "Inequality in the long run," PSE - Labex "OSE-Ouvrir la Science Economique" halshs-01053609, HAL.
    3. Thomas Piketty, 2014. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century: a multidimensional approach to the history of capital and social classes," Post-Print halshs-01157491, HAL.
    4. Stephen P. Jenkins, 1999. "Analysis of income distributions," Stata Technical Bulletin, StataCorp LP, vol. 8(48).
    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. James B. Davies & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2017. "Wealth inequality: Theory, measurement and decomposition," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1224-1261, December.
    2. Anastasios Evgenidis & Apostolos Fasianos, 2021. "Unconventional Monetary Policy and Wealth Inequalities in Great Britain," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(1), pages 115-175, February.
    3. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2017. "Skewness of citation impact data and covariates of citation distributions: A large-scale empirical analysis based on Web of Science data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 164-175.
    4. Anand, Ishan & Kumar, Rishabh, 2022. "The sky and the stratosphere: concentrated wealth in India during the ‘lost decade’," SocArXiv 726c8, Center for Open Science.
    5. Peñasco, Cristina & Anadón, Laura Díaz, 2023. "Assessing the effectiveness of energy efficiency measures in the residential sector gas consumption through dynamic treatment effects: Evidence from England and Wales," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    6. Gerson Pech & Catarina Delgado, 2020. "Percentile and stochastic-based approach to the comparison of the number of citations of articles indexed in different bibliographic databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 223-252, April.
    7. Mussa, Richard, 2017. "To Err is Human: Inconsistencies in Food Conversion Factors and Inequality in Malawi," MPRA Paper 75981, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. M. Mesut Badur & Md. Monirul Islam & Kazi Sohag, 2023. "Globalization–Income Inequality Nexus in the Post-Soviet Countries: Analysis of Heterogeneous Dataset Using the Quantiles via Moments Approach," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-29, March.
    9. Oliver Hümbelin, 2016. "Ungleichheit und Umverteilung über das Steuersystem. Eine Analyse der Verteilungseffekte von direkten Steuern und steuerlichen Abzügen mit Steuerdaten des Kantons Aargau (2001-2011)," University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers 23, University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences.
    10. Senia Nhamo & Edinah Mudimu, 2020. "Shifting from deductions to credits: Unpacking the distributional effects of medical expenditure considerations in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-30, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Charles Beach, 2023. "Quantile Tool Box Measures for Empirical Analysis and for Testing Distributional Comparisons in Direct Distribution-Free Fashion," Working Paper 1508, Economics Department, Queen's University.

    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. Bertrand Garbinti & Jonathan Goupille-Lebret & Thomas Piketty, 2017. "Income Inequality in France, 1900-2014: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts," Working Papers 201704, World Inequality Lab.
    2. Cowell, Frank A., 2014. "Piketty in the long run," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65992, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Thomas Piketty, 2015. "A Historical Approach to Property, Inequality and Debt: Reflections on Capital in the 21st Century," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 16(01), pages 40-49, May.
    4. Schäfer, Andreas & Prettner, Klaus, 2016. "The fall and rise of inequality," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145806, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Yuri Biondi & Simone Righi, 2019. "Inequality, mobility and the financial accumulation process: a computational economic analysis," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(1), pages 93-119, March.
    6. Smerlak, Matteo, 2016. "Thermodynamics of inequalities: From precariousness to economic stratification," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 441(C), pages 40-50.
    7. Stockhammer, Engelbert & Wildauer, Rafael, 2018. "Expenditure Cascades, Low Interest Rates or Property Booms? Determinants of Household Debt in OECD Countries," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 5(2), pages 85-121, September.
    8. Thomas Piketty, 2015. "Putting Distribution Back at the Center of Economics: Reflections on Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(1), pages 67-88, Winter.
    9. Kudlyak, Marianna & Faia, Ester & Shabalina, Ekaterina, 2021. "Dynamic Labor Reallocation with Heterogeneous Skills and Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk," CEPR Discussion Papers 16008, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Atanu Ghoshray & Issam Malki & Javier Ordóñez, 2022. "On the long-run dynamics of income and wealth inequality," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 375-408, February.
    11. José García-Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol & Juan Carlos Muñoz Mora, 2021. "Measuring Inequality from Above," Working Papers 1252, Barcelona School of Economics.
    12. Holger M. Mueller & Paige P. Ouimet & Elena Simintzi, 2015. "Wage Inequality and Firm Growth," LIS Working papers 632, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    13. Caparoz, Marcel & Marçal, Emerson Fernandes & Mattos, Enlinson, 2019. "A time series analysis of household income inequality in Brazil 1977 to 2013," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 73(4), December.
    14. Huang,Zhangkai & Miao,Meng & Shao,Yi & Xu,L. Colin, 2021. "Warlords, State Failures, and the Rise of Communism in China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9754, The World Bank.
    15. Yong Tao & Xiangjun Wu & Tao Zhou & Weibo Yan & Yanyuxiang Huang & Han Yu & Benedict Mondal & Victor M. Yakovenko, 2019. "Exponential structure of income inequality: evidence from 67 countries," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(2), pages 345-376, June.
    16. Thomas Piketty, 2015. "About Capital in the Twenty-First Century," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 48-53, May.
    17. Matteo Smerlak, 2014. "Thermodynamics of inequalities: from precariousness to economic stratification," Papers 1406.6441, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2014.
    18. Garbinti, Bertrand & Goupille-Lebret, Jonathan & Piketty, Thomas, 2018. "Income inequality in France, 1900–2014: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (DINA)," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 63-77.
    19. Carlos Garriga & Bryan J. Noeth & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2017. "Household Debt and the Great Recession," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 99(2).
    20. Zeynep B. Ugur, 2021. "How does Inequality Hamper Subjective Well-being? The Role of Fairness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 377-407, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    pshare; percentile shares; Lorenz curve; concentration curve; inequality; income distribution; wealth distribution; graphics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C87 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Econometric Software
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    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:tsj:stataj:y:16:y:2016:i:2:p:264-300. 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: Christopher F. Baum or Lisa Gilmore (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.stata-journal.com/ .

    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.