Comment: On the Interpretation (and Misinterpretation) of Inequality Decompositions by Income Sources

Ayal Kimhi

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.08.001

Comment: On the Interpretation (and Misinterpretation) of Inequality Decompositions by Income Sources

Ayal Kimhi^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Environmental Economics and Management

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper discusses interpretations of different inequality decomposition rules when inequality is decomposed by income sources. It argues that authors of a recent article based their conclusions on misinterpreted decomposition results. It also argues that marginal effects, derived as elasticities of inequality with respect to uniform increases in income from each source, are easily interpreted and can be compared across different decomposition rules.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1888-1890
Number of pages	3
Journal	World Development
Volume	39
Issue number	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.08.001
State	Published - Oct 2011

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Center for Agricultural Economic Research. Helpful comments and suggestions by Myoung-jae Lee and Shlomo Yitzhaki, as well as seminar participants at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Management of the Hebrew University, the School of Economics at Nagoya University, The Department of Economics at Bar Ilan University, and the 2007 annual meeting of the Israel Economic Association, are gratefully acknowledged.

Keywords

Decomposition
Income inequality
Income sources
Interpretation
Marginal effects

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.08.001

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title = "Comment: On the Interpretation (and Misinterpretation) of Inequality Decompositions by Income Sources",

abstract = "This paper discusses interpretations of different inequality decomposition rules when inequality is decomposed by income sources. It argues that authors of a recent article based their conclusions on misinterpreted decomposition results. It also argues that marginal effects, derived as elasticities of inequality with respect to uniform increases in income from each source, are easily interpreted and can be compared across different decomposition rules.",

keywords = "Decomposition, Income inequality, Income sources, Interpretation, Marginal effects",

author = "Ayal Kimhi",

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Comment: On the Interpretation (and Misinterpretation) of Inequality Decompositions by Income Sources

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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