International Multidimensional Comparisons of Inequality in Disposable Income and Access to Public Goods

Nicolas Gravel (), Patrick Moyes () and Benoît Tarroux

No 506, IDEP Working Papers from Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France

Abstract: This paper provides a comparison of 12 OECD countries on the basis of the (multidimensional) inequality in both disposable income and access to public goods. The public goods considered, measured at the regional level, are infant mortality and pupils/teacher ratios at public schools. The comparison is performed using recent multidimensional dominance criteria developped along the seminal lines of Atkinson and Bourguignon [3]. The comparisons reveal that, despite their possible undecisiveness which increase with the number of dimensions, the criteria are able to provide conclusive rankings in about 36% of the comparisons (against 78% in the case of unidimensional income inequality comparisons based on the generalized Lorenz criterion). We also complete the analysis by comparing multidimensional inequalities on the basis of two broad categories of indices. All in all, the introduction of the two public goods modifies the inequality-based ranking of the countries. The most significant modification that it entails is to reduce the relative ranking of countries such as Australia and United State who perform badly in terms of both the level and the distribution of the two public goods and to increase the position of Portugal. Yet, it appears that the (positive) correlation between unidimensional and multidimensional indices is quite high, suggesting that a comparison of the countries based on income inequality alone does not provide a bad approximation of a ranking of the same countries resulting from multidimensional comparisons.

Keywords: Inequalities; Dominance; Multidimensional; International comparisons; Public Goods. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 H4 H70 I1 I2 I3 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2005-06-08, Revised 2005-06-08
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: International multidimensional comparisons of inequality in disposable income and access to public goods (2005)
Working Paper: International multidimensional comparisons of inequality in disposable income and access to public goods (2005)
Working Paper: International multidimensional comparisons of inequality in disposable income and access to public goods (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iep:wpidep:0506

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