IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/dp2003-52.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are Neighbours Equal? Estimating Local Inequality in Three Developing Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Chris Elbers
  • Peter Lanjouw
  • Johan A. Mistiaen
  • Berk Özler
  • Kenneth Simler

Abstract

Based on a statistical procedure that combines household survey data with population census data, this paper presents estimates of inequality for three developing countries at a level of disaggregation far below that allowed by household surveys alone. We show that while the share of within-community inequality in overall inequality is high, this does not necessarily imply that all communities in a given country are as unequal as the country as a whole. In fact, in all three countries there is considerable variation in inequality across communities.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Elbers & Peter Lanjouw & Johan A. Mistiaen & Berk Özler & Kenneth Simler, 2003. "Are Neighbours Equal? Estimating Local Inequality in Three Developing Countries," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2003-52, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:dp2003-52
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/dp2003-052.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kanbur, Ravi, 2000. "Income distribution and development," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 791-841, Elsevier.
    2. Cowell, F.A., 2000. "Measurement of inequality," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 87-166, Elsevier.
    3. Sen, Amartya, 1997. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198292975.
    4. Elbers, Chris & Lanjouw, Jean O. & Lanjouw, Peter, 2002. "Micro-level estimation of welfare," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2911, The World Bank.
    5. Bourguignon, Francois, 1979. "Decomposable Income Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(4), pages 901-920, July.
    6. Simler, Kenneth R. & Nhate, Virgulino, 2005. "Poverty, inequality, and geographic targeting: evidence from small-area estimates in Mozambique," FCND briefs 192, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Shorrocks, A F, 1980. "The Class of Additively Decomposable Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(3), pages 613-625, April.
    8. Gabriel Demombynes & Chris Elbers & Jean O. Lanjouw & Peter Lanjouw & Johan A. Mistiaen & Berk Özler, 2002. "Producing an Improved Geographic Profile of Poverty: Methodology and Evidence from Three Developing Countries," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2002-39, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Chris Elbers & Jean O. Lanjouw & Peter Lanjouw, 2003. "Micro--Level Estimation of Poverty and Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 355-364, January.
    10. Martin Ravallion, 1999. "Is More Targeting Consistent with Less Spending?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 6(3), pages 411-419, August.
    11. Ravallion, Martin, 2000. "Monitoring Targeting Performance When Decentralized Allocations to the Poor Are Unobserved," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 14(2), pages 331-345, May.
    12. A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), 2000. "Handbook of Income Distribution," Handbook of Income Distribution, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    13. Hentschel, Jesko, et al, 2000. "Combining Census and Survey Data to Trace the Spatial Dimensions of Poverty: A Case Study of Ecuador," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 14(1), pages 147-165, January.
    14. Lanjouw, Peter & Stern, Nicholas, 1998. "Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288329.
    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. Lessmann, Christian, 2013. "Foreign direct investment and regional inequality: A panel data analysis," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 129-149.
    2. World Bank, 2007. "Yemen Poverty Assessment : Volume 2. Annexes," World Bank Publications - Reports 7906, The World Bank Group.
    3. Jesse Naidoo, 2009. "Finite-Sample Bias and Inconsistency in the Estimation of Poverty Maps," SALDRU Working Papers 36, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    4. Ghazala Mansuri, 2004. "Community-Based and -Driven Development: A Critical Review," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 19(1), pages 1-39.
    5. Barrett, Christopher B. & Swallow, Brent M., 2006. "Fractal poverty traps," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 1-15, January.
    6. David Warner & Prasada Rao & William E. Griffiths & Duangkamon Chotikapanich, 2011. "Global Inequality: Levels and Trends, 1993-2005," Discussion Papers Series 436, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    7. Anthony Shorrocks & Guanghua Wan, 2005. "Spatial decomposition of inequality," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 59-81, January.
    8. Sergei Soares, 2018. "The Market Value of Owner Occupied Housing and Public Infrastructure Services," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 69, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    9. repec:ilo:ilowps:458221 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Baschieri, Angela & Falkingham, Jane & Hornby, Duncan & Hutton, Craig, 2005. "Creating a Poverty Map for Azerbaijan," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3793, The World Bank.
    11. Georg Hirte & Christian Lessmann, 2014. "Trade, Integration, and Interregional Inequality," CESifo Working Paper Series 4799, CESifo.
    12. Arsenio M. Balisacan & Nobuhiko Fuwa, 2004. "Changes in Spatial Income Inequality in the Philippines: An Exploratory Analysis," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-34, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Walker, Thomas S. & Pitoro, Raul & Tomo, Alda & Sitoe, Isabel & Salencia, Celestino & Mahanzule, Rosalina & Donovan, Cynthia & Mazuze, Feliciano M., 2006. "Priority Setting for Public-Sector Agricultural Research in Mozambique with the National Agricultural Survey Data," Food Security Collaborative Working Papers 56113, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    14. Josef Novotný, 2007. "On the measurement of regional inequality: does spatial dimension of income inequality matter?," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 41(3), pages 563-580, September.
    15. Lessmann, Christian, 2014. "Spatial inequality and development — Is there an inverted-U relationship?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 35-51.
    16. World Bank, 2007. "Bangladesh : Strategy for Sustained Growth, Volume 1. Summary Report," World Bank Publications - Reports 7765, The World Bank Group.
    17. Fujii, Tomoki, 2008. "How Well Can We Target Aid with Rapidly Collected Data? Empirical Results for Poverty Mapping from Cambodia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 1830-1842, October.
    18. Cornia, Giovanni Andrea, 2017. "Income Inequality Trends in sub-Saharan Africa: Divergence, determinants and consequences: Inequality Levels, Trends and Determinants in sub-Saharan Africa: An Overview of main changes since the early," UNDP Africa Reports 267642, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    19. Marta Jankowska & Magdalena Benza & John Weeks, 2013. "Estimating spatial inequalities of urban child mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(2), pages 33-62.

    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. Elbers, Chris & Lanjouw, Peter & Mistiaen, Johan & Özler, Berk & Simler, Kenneth, 2003. "Are neighbors equal?," FCND discussion papers 147, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
      • Elbers, Chris & Lanjouw, Peter & Mistiaen, Johan & Özler, Berk & Simler, Kenneth, 2003. "Are neighbors equal?," FCND briefs 147, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    2. Stephen P. Jenkins & John Micklewright, 2007. "New Directions in the Analysis of Inequality and Poverty," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 700, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Chris Elbers & Peter Lanjouw & Johan Mistiaen & Berk Özler, 2008. "Reinterpreting between-group inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(3), pages 231-245, September.
    4. 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.
    5. Elbers, Chris & Lanjouw, Peter & Mistiaen, Johan A. & Ozler, Berk, 2005. "Re-interpreting sub-group inequality decompositions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3687, The World Bank.
    6. 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.
    7. Ji-Won Park & Chae Un Kim, 2021. "Getting to a feasible income equality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-16, March.
    8. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia, 2008. "The ‘Extended’ Atkinson family: The class of multiplicatively decomposable inequality measures, and some new graphical procedures for analysts," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(2), pages 211-225, June.
    9. Elbers, Chris & Fujii, Tomoki & Lanjouw, Peter & Ozler, Berk & Yin, Wesley, 2007. "Poverty alleviation through geographic targeting: How much does disaggregation help?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 198-213, May.
    10. Heshmati, Almas, 2004. "A Review of Decomposition of Income Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 1221, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Anh Thu Quang Pham & Pundarik Mukhopadhaya & Ha Vu, 2020. "Targeting Administrative Regions for Multidimensional Poverty Alleviation: A Study on Vietnam," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 143-189, July.
    12. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia & Oscar Volij, 2013. "An axiomatic characterization of the Theil inequality ordering," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(3), pages 757-776, November.
    13. Frank A Cowell, 2003. "Theil, Inequality and the Structure of Income Distribution," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 67, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    14. Stefan Gravemeyer & Thomas Gries & Jinjun Xue, 2011. "Income Determination and Income Discrimination in Shenzhen," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(7), pages 1457-1475, May.
    15. Lanjouw, Peter & Rao, Vijayendra, 2011. "Revisiting Between-Group Inequality Measurement: An Application to the Dynamics of Caste Inequality in Two Indian Villages," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 174-187, February.
    16. Ji-Won Park & Chae Un Kim, 2020. "Getting to a feasible income equality," Papers 2011.09119, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2021.
    17. Claudio A. Agostini & Philip H. Brown, 2010. "Local Distributional Effects Of Government Cash Transfers In Chile," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(2), pages 366-388, June.
    18. Tomoki Fujii, 2013. "Geographic decomposition of inequality in health and wealth: evidence from Cambodia," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(3), pages 373-392, September.
    19. Juan Luis Londoño & Miguel Székely, 2000. "Persistent Poverty and Excess Inequality: Latin America, 1970-1995," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 3, pages 93-134, May.
    20. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia & Oscar Volij, 2011. "An Axiomatic Characterization Of The Theil Inequality Order," Working Papers 1103, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.

    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:unu:wpaper:dp2003-52. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.