INCOME DISTRIBUTION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN PUERTO RICO, ARGENTINA, AND MEXICO*

Richard Weisskoff

Review of Income and Wealth, 1970, vol. 16, issue 4, 303-332

Abstract: Has economic growth in developing countries led to increasing inequality in the size distribution of income? Following a brief review of the advantages and deficiencies of several traditional measures of income distribution, the author examines the evidence from Puerto Rico, Argentina, and Mexico in recent years. The findings suggest that the income shares received by the lower half and by the top 5 per cent of families in Puerto Rico and Mexico have declined from 1950 to 1963, while the income shares received by the bottom nine deciles of families in Argentina have also fallen during the same period. The rising Gini ratio and standard deviation of the logs of income, both indicating greater inequality, contrast with a declining coefficient of variation for all three countries. More detailed sectoral distributions for each year reveal greater equality within agriculture than non‐agriculture for Puerto Rico and Mexico, while Argentina and the United States demonstrate less equality within agriculture. The trends in the countrywide distributions are consistent with the observation of the increasing differential between sectors, the increasing weight of the more unequal sector, and the increasing level of inequality within both sectors. These trends, however, are qualified by the particular set of measures which are applied to the data. Finally, the author speculates on possible explainations for these trends in terms of changes in the crop and industry mix.

Date: 1970
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4991.1970.tb00759.x

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:revinw:v:16:y:1970:i:4:p:303-332

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0034-6586

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Income and Wealth is currently edited by Conchita D'Ambrosio and Robert J. Hill

More articles in Review of Income and Wealth from International Association for Research in Income and Wealth Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().