Convergence in Income Inequality: Further Evidence from the Club Clustering Methodology across the U.S. States

Nicholas Apergis (), Christina Christou, Rangan Gupta and Stephen Miller
Additional contact information
Christina Christou: University of Piraeus

No 2016-19, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper contributes to the sparse literature on inequality convergence by empirically testing convergence across the U.S. States. This sample period encompasses a series of different periods that are discussed in the existing literature -- the Great Depression (1929-1944), the Great Compression (1945-1979), the Great Divergence (1980-present), the Great Moderation (1982-2007), and the Great Recession (2007-2009). This paper implements the relatively new methodology of panel convergence testing, recommended by Phillips and Sul (2007). This method examines the club convergence hypothesis, which argues that certain countries, states, sectors, or regions belong to a club that moves from disequilibrium positions to their club-specific steady-state positions. We find strong support for convergence through the late 1970s and early 1980s and then evidence of divergence. The divergence, however, moves the dispersion of inequality measures across states only a fraction of the way back to their levels in the early part of the 20th Century.

Keywords: Club convergence; Inequality measures; Panel data; US states (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: Stephen Miller is the corresponding author
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2016-19.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Convergence in Income Inequality: Further Evidence from the Club Clustering Methodology across the U.S. States (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uct:uconnp:2016-19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics University of Connecticut 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark McConnel ().