Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/95489 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
LIS Working Paper Series No. 609
Publisher: 
Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), Luxembourg
Abstract: 
Inequality is anisotropic: its intensity is variable along the income scale. Therefore, to focus on local inequalities, a new representation, the isograph, is developed to figure their variations. This leads to the expression of three coefficients able to summarize the shape of inequalities: a main coefficient, alpha, measures inequality at the median, and two correction coefficients, beta and gamma, take into account the curvatures at the top and at the bottom of the distribution. A set of 212 samples of microdata surveys from 40 different countries of the LIS datacenter archive provides a systematic view on the properties of these ABG (alpha beta gamma) coefficients that are compared to a set of standard indices (Atkinson indexes, generalized entropy, Wolfson polarization, etc.). This method also provides a smoothing tool that is able to show the differences in shape of distributions (strobiloid) and their change over time.
Subjects: 
inequality
distributions
comparisons
polarization
stobiloid
JEL: 
D31
C16
C46
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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