Measuring Inequality from Above

Marta Reynal-Querol and José García-Montalvo

No 1252, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: Recent research has shown the usefulness of nighttime light (NTL) data as a proxy for growth and economic activity. This paper explores the potential of using luminosity at night, recorded by satellite imagery, to construct measures of inequality. We develop a new methodology to construct a Gini index for each country using the nighttime light per capita over millions of small pixels. To assess the usefulness of our procedure, we check the correlation of our measure with the common factor extracted from the analysis of several Gini indices calculated using traditional data sources. Finally, we show two specific applications of our methodology: the calculation of within and between inequality across regions and ethnic groups.

Keywords: inequality; development; inequality between and within decomposition; nighttime light (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-dev, nep-geo and nep-gro
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:1252

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