Statistical analysis of inequality with decompositions: the Canadian experience

David M. Gray, Jeffrey A. Mills and Sourushe Zandvakili

Empirical Economics, 2003, vol. 28, issue 2, pages 291-302

Abstract: This study carries out a decomposition of Theil-entropy measures into a between-group component, based on factors such as education, age, gender, and marital status, and a component representing inequality within each group. We apply a bootstrapping technique to measures of inequality to enable statistical inference. Trends in household income inequality in Canada are investigated using data from 1991 to 1997 drawn from Survey of Consumer Finance. We find an evident trend toward increasing inequality of household incomes between the years 1991–1997, during which the economy was recovering from a steep recession. Although most of the increase in measured inequality is attributed to the `within-group' component, we find the change in `between-group' inequality to be significant for education, age, and marital status. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003

Keywords: Key words: Inequality; Decomposition; Bootstrapping; Canada (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s001810200131 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:empeco:v:28:y:2003:i:2:p:291-302

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://link.springer.de/orders.htm

Access Statistics for this article

Empirical Economics is edited by Badi H. Baltagi, Heather M. Anderson and Bernd Fitzenberger

More articles in Empirical Economics from Springer
Series data maintained by Christopher F Baum ().