Measuring Income Polarization Using an Enlarged Middle Class

Chiara Gigliarano and Pietro Muliere ()
Additional contact information
Pietro Muliere: Università Bocconi, Milano

No 271, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: In this paper, a new class of polarization measures is derived axiomatically. The concept of polarization is here identified with the decline of the middle class. In particular, we extend the definition of middle class towards a more realistic framework: the middle class is defined in terms of central interval rather than median income. Then polarization is measured both as the presence of well-separated poles and as the dispersion inside the middle class. This new class of indices can be seen as a generalization of existing measures of income polarization. Also, a new polarization ordering is introduced. The new approach is illustrated with an application to EU countries.

Keywords: axioms; transfers; polarization measurement; income distribution. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C43 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2012-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2012-271.pdf (application/pdf)

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:inq:inqwps:ecineq2012-271

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maria Ana Lugo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).