Appraising cross-national income inequality databases: An introduction
Francisco Ferreira,
Nora Lustig and
Daniel Teles
The Journal of Economic Inequality, 2015, vol. 13, issue 4, 497-526
Abstract:
In response to a growing interest in comparing inequality levels and trends across countries, a number of cross-national inequality databases are now available. These databases differ considerably in purpose, coverage, data sources, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and quality of documentation. This special issue reviews and compares eight such databases. Five are microdata-based: CEPALSTAT, Income Distribution Database (IDD), LIS, PovcalNet, and Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean (SEDLAC); two are based on secondary sources: “All the Ginis” (ATG) and the World Income Inequality Database (WIID); and one is generated entirely through multiple-imputation methods: the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID). Although there is much agreement across these databases, there is also a non-trivial share of country/year cells for which substantial discrepancies exist. In some cases, different databases would lead users to radically different conclusions about inequality dynamics in certain countries and periods. The methodological differences that lead to these discrepancies often appear to be driven by a fundamental trade-off between a wish for broader coverage on the one hand, and for greater comparability on the other. These differences across databases place considerable responsibility on both producers and users: on the former, to better document and explain their assumptions and procedures, and on the latter, to understand the data they are using, rather than merely taking it as true because available. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Keywords: Inequality comparisons; Inequality databases; International inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (64)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10888-015-9316-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
Working Paper: Appraising cross-national income inequality databases: An introduction (2015) 
Working Paper: Appraising Cross-National Income Inequality Databases: An Introduction (2015) 
Working Paper: Appraising Cross-National Income Inequality Databases: An Introduction (2015) 
Working Paper: Appraising cross-national income inequality databases: an introduction (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:kap:jecinq:v:13:y:2015:i:4:p:497-526
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10888/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10888-015-9316-0
Access Statistics for this article
The Journal of Economic Inequality is currently edited by Stephen Jenkins
More articles in The Journal of Economic Inequality from Springer, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().