[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2018-149.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Empirical challenges comparing inequality across countries: The case of middle-income countries from the LIS database

Author

Listed:
  • Daniele Checchi
  • Andrej Cupak
  • Teresa Munzi
  • Janet Gornick
Abstract
This study presents new empirical results, using microdata from the LIS database, on development patterns in economic inequality for a set of countries that are less covered in the empirical literature, mostly due to the lack of appropriate data. After discussing the main challenges when harmonizing income and consumption microdata from middle-income countries, we focus on Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa, in a comparative perspective, and we compare them with a selection of benchmark middle- and high-income countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniele Checchi & Andrej Cupak & Teresa Munzi & Janet Gornick, 2018. "Empirical challenges comparing inequality across countries: The case of middle-income countries from the LIS database," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-149, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2018-149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2018-149.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucas Chancel & Thomas Piketty, 2019. "Indian Income Inequality, 1922‐2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 33-62, November.
    2. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    3. Filip Novokmet & Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2018. "From Soviets to oligarchs: inequality and property in Russia 1905-2016," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 189-223, June.
    4. Cornia, Giovanni Andrea (ed.), 2014. "Falling Inequality in Latin America: Policy Changes and Lessons," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198701804.
    5. Ms. Sonali Jain-Chandra & Niny Khor & Rui Mano & Johanna Schauer & Mr. Philippe Wingender & Juzhong Zhuang, 2018. "Inequality in China – Trends, Drivers and Policy Remedies," IMF Working Papers 2018/127, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Thomas Piketty & Nancy Qian, 2009. "Income Inequality and Progressive Income Taxation in China and India, 1986-2015," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 53-63, April.
    7. Roine, Jesper & Vlachos, Jonas & Waldenström, Daniel, 2009. "The long-run determinants of inequality: What can we learn from top income data?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 974-988, August.
    8. Cowell, Frank, 2011. "Measuring Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780199594047.
    9. James B. Davies & Rodrigo Lluberas & Anthony F. Shorrocks, 2017. "Estimating the Level and Distribution of Global Wealth, 2000–2014," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(4), pages 731-759, December.
    10. Derek Yu, 2009. "The comparability of Census 1996, Census 2001 and Community Survey 2007," Working Papers 21/2009, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    11. Lustig, Nora & Lopez-Calva, Luis F. & Ortiz-Juarez, Eduardo, 2013. "Declining Inequality in Latin America in the 2000s: The Cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 129-141.
    12. Rebecca Rasch, 2017. "Measuring the Middle Class in Middle-Income Countries," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(4), pages 321-336, October.
    13. Caroline Krafft & Ragui Assaad & Hanan Nazier & Racha Ramadan & Atiyeh Vahidmanesh & Sami Zouari, 2019. "Estimating poverty and inequality in the absence of consumption data: an application to the Middle East and North Africa," Middle East Development Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 1-29, January.
    14. Madhusudan Ghosh, 2012. "Regional Economic Growth and Inequality in India during the Pre- and Post-reform Periods," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 190-212, June.
    15. Martin Evans & Alejandra Hidalgo & Mei Wang, 2018. "Universal Child Allowances in 14 Middle Income Countries: Options for Policy and Poverty Reduction," LIS Working papers 738, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    16. Murray Leibbrandt & Laura Poswell & Pranushka & Matthew Welch & Ingrid Woolard, 2004. "Measuring recent changes in South African inequality and poverty using 1996 and 2001 census data," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 084, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    17. Leonardo Gasparini & Guillero Cruces & Leopoldo Tornarolli, 2011. "Recent Trends In Income Inequality In Latin America," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Spring 20), pages 147-201, January.
    18. Piketty, Thomas & Chancel, Lucas, 2017. "Indian income inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj ?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12409, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Cally Ardington & David Lam & Murray Leibbrandt & Matthew Welch, 2005. "The Sensitivity of Estimates of Post-Apartheid Changes in South African Poverty and Inequality to key Data Imputations," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 106, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    20. Servaas van der Berg, 2010. "Current poverty and income distribution in the context of South African history," Working Papers 22/2010, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frederick Solt, 2020. "Measuring Income Inequality Across Countries and Over Time: The Standardized World Income Inequality Database," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(3), pages 1183-1199, May.
    2. Solt, Frederick, 2019. "Measuring Income Inequality Across Countries and Over Time: The Standardized World Income Inequality Database," SocArXiv mwnje, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniele Checchi & Andrej Cupak & Teresa Munzi & Janet Gornick, 2018. "Empirical challenges comparing inequality across countries," LIS Working papers 756, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Daniele Checchi & Andrej Cupak & Teresa Munzi & Janet Gornick, 2018. "Empirical challenges comparing inequality across countries: The case of middle-income countries from the LIS database," WIDER Working Paper Series 149, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Diego Winkelried & Bruno Escobar, 2022. "Declining inequality in Latin America? Robustness checks for Peru," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 223-243, March.
    4. Nora Lustig, 2020. "The ``missing rich'' in household surveys: causes and correction approaches," Working Papers 520, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    5. Facundo Alvaredo & Lydia Assouad & Thomas Piketty, 2019. "Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(4), pages 685-711, December.
    6. Nora Lustig, 2019. "The “Missing Rich” in Household Surveys: Causes and Correction Approaches," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 75, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    7. Bartels, Charlotte & Waldenström, Daniel, 2021. "Inequality and top incomes," GLO Discussion Paper Series 959, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    8. Piketty, Thomas & Alvaredo, Facundo & Assouad, Lydia, 2017. "Measuring inequality in the Middle East 1990-2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12405, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Thomas Blanchet & Ignacio Flores & Marc Morgan, 2022. "The weight of the rich: improving surveys using tax data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 119-150, March.
    10. Germán Reyes & Leonardo Gasparini, 2017. "Perceptions of Distributive Justice in Latin America During a Period of Falling Inequality," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0209, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    11. Atanu Ghoshray & Issam Malki & Javier Ordóñez, 2022. "On the long-run dynamics of income and wealth inequality," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 375-408, February.
    12. Rao, R. Kavita, 2022. "Income Tax data and Facets of transparency," Working Papers 22/384, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    13. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2012. "Optimal Labor Income Taxation," NBER Working Papers 18521, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Frank Cowell & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2021. "Inequality Measurement: Methods and Data," Post-Print hal-03589066, HAL.
    15. Mauricio De Rosa & Joan Vilá, 2022. "Beyond tax-survey combination: inequality and the blurry household-firm border," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 22-10, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    16. Edwin Fourrier-Nicolai & Michel Lubrano, 2019. "The Effect of Aspirations on Inequality: Evidence from the German Reunification using Bayesian Growth Incidence Curves," Working Papers halshs-02122371, HAL.
    17. Thomas Piketty & Li Yang, 2022. "Income and Wealth Inequality in Hong Kong, 1981–2020: The Rise of Pluto-Communism? [Top Wealth Shares in the UK over More than a Century]," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 36(4), pages 803-834.
    18. Pawel Bukowski & Filip Novokmet, 2018. "Inequality in Poland: Estimating the whole distribution by g-percentile 1983-2015," LIS Working papers 731, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    19. Liliana Cano, 2015. "Income Mobility in Ecuador: New Evidence from Individual Income Tax Returns," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-040, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Liliana Cano, 2015. "Income mobility in Ecuador: New evidence from individual income tax returns," WIDER Working Paper Series 040, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2018-149. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.