IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inq/inqwps/ecineq2020-535.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bottom incomes and the measurement of poverty and inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Vladimir Hlasny

    (Ewha Womans University)

  • Lidia Ceriani

    (Georgetown University)

  • Paolo Verme

    (World Bank)

Abstract

Incomes in surveys suffer from various measurement problems, most notably in the tails of their distributions. We study the prevalence of negative and zero incomes, and their implications for inequality and poverty measurement relying on 57 harmonized surveys covering 12 countries over the period 1995-2016. The paper explains the composition and sources of negative and zero incomes and assesses the distributional impacts of alternative correction methods on poverty and inequality measures. It finds that the main source of negative disposable incomes is negative self-employment income, and that high tax, social security withholdings and high self-paid social-security contributions account for negative incomes in some countries. Using detailed information on expenditure, we conclude that households with negative incomes are typically as well off as, or even better, than other households in terms of material wellbeing. By contrast, zero-income households are found to be materially deprived. Adjusting poverty and inequality measures for these findings can alter these measures significantly.

Suggested Citation

  • Vladimir Hlasny & Lidia Ceriani & Paolo Verme, 2020. "Bottom incomes and the measurement of poverty and inequality," Working Papers 535, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
  • Handle: RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2020-535
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2020-535.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. VAN KERM Philippe, 2007. "Extreme incomes and the estimation of poverty and inequality indicators from EU-SILC," IRISS Working Paper Series 2007-01, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD.
    2. Richard Blundell & Monica Costa Dias, 2009. "Alternative Approaches to Evaluation in Empirical Microeconomics," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(3).
    3. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    4. 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.
    5. Cowell, Frank A. & Flachaire, Emmanuel, 2007. "Income distribution and inequality measurement: The problem of extreme values," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 1044-1072, December.
    6. Frank A. Cowell, 2008. "Income Distribution and Inequality," Chapters, in: John B. Davis & Wilfred Dolfsma (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Social Economics, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Markus Jäntti & Eva M. Sierminska & Philippe Van Kerm, 2015. "Modeling the Joint Distribution of Income and Wealth," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Measurement of Poverty, Deprivation, and Economic Mobility, volume 23, pages 301-327, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    8. Athey, Susan & Imbens, Guido W., 2019. "Machine Learning Methods Economists Should Know About," Research Papers 3776, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    9. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2018. "Top Incomes and the Measurement of Inequality in Egypt," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 32(2), pages 428-455.
    10. Vladimir Hlasny, 2020. "Top Expenditure Distribution in Arab Countries and the Inequality Puzzle," Working Papers 549, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    11. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Jäntti, Markus, 2005. "Methods for summarizing and comparing wealth distributions," ISER Working Paper Series 2005-05, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    12. Lidia Ceriani & Paolo Verme, 2019. "The inequality of extreme incomes," Working Papers 490, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    13. Stich, Andreas, 1996. "Inequality and negative income," Discussion Papers in Econometrics and Statistics 4/96, University of Cologne, Institute of Econometrics and Statistics.
    14. Stephen P. Jenkins & Richard V. Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Jeff Larrimore, 2011. "Measuring inequality using censored data: a multiple‐imputation approach to estimation and inference," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 174(1), pages 63-81, January.
    15. David Haziza & Jean‐François Beaumont, 2007. "On the Construction of Imputation Classes in Surveys," International Statistical Review, International Statistical Institute, vol. 75(1), pages 25-43, April.
    16. Frank A. Cowell & Philippe Kerm, 2015. "Wealth Inequality: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 671-710, September.
    17. James Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures: 25 years later," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(4), pages 491-524, December.
    18. James E. Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Poverty Measures: Twenty-Five Years Later," Working Papers 2010-14, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    19. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2019. "Machine Learning Methods That Economists Should Know About," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 685-725, August.
    20. Cowell, Frank A. & Victoria-Feser, Maria-Pia, 1996. "Poverty measurement with contaminated data: A robust approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1761-1771, December.
    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. Al-Mouksit AKIM & Mahdi Ben JELLOUL & Leo CZAJKA & Anne-Sophie ROBILLIARD, 2020. "Collect more, spend better? Assessing the incidence of fiscal systems and public spending in three Francophone West African countries," Working Paper 3023a15d-161b-4025-a0eb-e, Agence française de développement.
    2. Adam Szulc, 2022. "Reconstruction of the Social Cash Transfers System in Poland and Household Well-being: 2015 - 2018 Evidence," KAE Working Papers 2022-076, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Economic Analysis.
    3. Pazzona, Matteo, 2024. "Revisiting the Income Inequality-Crime Puzzle," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    4. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2022. "On the ‘Arab Inequality Puzzle’: A Comment," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 53(2), pages 448-458, March.
    5. Robert Musil & Jiannis Kaucic, 2024. "Housing Market Segmentation as a Driver of Urban Micro-Segregation? An In-Depth Analysis of Two Viennese Districts," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-25, September.
    6. Lidia Ceriani & Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2021. "Bottom Incomes and the Measurement of Poverty: A Brief Assessment of the Literature," Working Papers 589, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    7. Vladimir Hlasny, 2021. "Parametric representation of the top of income distributions: Options, historical evidence, and model selection," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1217-1256, September.
    8. Vladimir Hlasny & Shireen AlAzzawi, 2020. "Return Migration and Earnings Mobility in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia," Working Papers 562, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    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. Lidia Ceriani & Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2021. "Bottom Incomes and the Measurement of Poverty: A Brief Assessment of the Literature," Working Papers 589, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    2. Vladimir Hlasny, 2021. "Parametric representation of the top of income distributions: Options, historical evidence, and model selection," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1217-1256, September.
    3. Frank A. Cowell & Philippe Kerm, 2015. "Wealth Inequality: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 671-710, September.
    4. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2022. "The Impact of Top Incomes Biases on the Measurement of Inequality in the United States," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(4), pages 749-788, August.
    5. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2018. "Top Incomes and Inequality Measurement: A Comparative Analysis of Correction Methods Using the EU SILC Data," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-21, June.
    6. Lidia Ceriani & Paolo Verme, 2022. "Population Changes and the Measurement of Inequality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 549-575, July.
    7. Brian A'Hearn & Stefano Chianese & Giovanni Vecchi, 2020. "Aristocracy and Inequality in Italy, 1861-1931," HHB Working Papers Series 18, The Historical Household Budgets Project.
    8. Nora Lustig, 2019. "The “Missing Rich” in Household Surveys: Causes and Correction Approaches," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 75, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    9. Brunori, Paolo & Salas Rojo, Pedro & Verne, Paolo, 2022. "Estimating inequality with missing incomes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115932, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Nora Lustig, 2020. "The ``missing rich'' in household surveys: causes and correction approaches," Working Papers 520, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    11. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2018. "Top Incomes and the Measurement of Inequality in Egypt," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 32(2), pages 428-455.
    12. Arthur Charpentier & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2022. "Pareto models for top incomes and wealth," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 1-25, March.
    13. Vladimir Hlasny, 2019. "Redistributive Impacts of Fiscal Policies in Mexico: Corrections for Top Income Measurement Problems," LIS Working papers 765, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    14. Michal Brzezinski, 2014. "Statistical inference for richness measures," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(14), pages 1599-1608, May.
    15. Safari, Muhammad Aslam Mohd & Masseran, Nurulkamal & Ibrahim, Kamarulzaman & Hussain, Saiful Izzuan, 2021. "Measuring income inequality: A robust semi-parametric approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 562(C).
    16. Nora Lustig, 2018. "Measuring the Distribution of Household Income, Consumption and Wealth: State of Play and Measurement Challenges," Working Papers 1801, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    17. Arthur Charpentier & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2019. "Pareto Models for Top Incomes," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-02145024, HAL.
    18. Michal Brzezinski, 2011. "Variance Estimation for Richness Measures," LWS Working papers 11, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    19. Nora Lustig, 2016. "Commitment to Equity Handbook. A Guide to Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 1301, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    20. Ye, Yuxiang & Koch, Steven F., 2021. "Measuring energy poverty in South Africa based on household required energy consumption," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bottom incomes; income inequality; poverty; self-employment; Mediterranean; Middle East; Pareto; random forest.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • N35 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Asia including Middle East

    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:inq:inqwps:ecineq2020-535. 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: Maria Ana Lugo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecineea.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.