Talk:Income inequality metrics

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[edit] Merge with Economic Inequality

This article pretty much deals with the same subject matter as economic inequality. Should they be merged?


[edit] Improvement drive

A related topic, Grameen Bank, has been nominated on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. Contribute your expertise and vote for Grameen Bank on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive!--Fenice 06:47, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Absolute measures

  1. Absolute measures often give very different results than relative measures. For example, in measuring inequality changes due to the development of less developed countries, absolute measures typically show improvements as the general income level rises, but it is also common for relative measures to deteriorate as the new wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the upper percentiles. The diverging results can be a problem if they are used inappropriately or interpreted incorrectly.

I cut it, because it claims as a fact that developed countries often have higher income inequality, while the empirical data seems to show a completely opposite trend. Almost universally, the less developed the country, the higher its income inequality. Seriously, it should be backed by some data if it is to stay.

Here's a map: Taw 13:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why?

Would someone mind putting in a section iterating why income equality is important? Fephisto 18:49, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I put in a link to economic inequality, which covers those issues. -- Beland 20:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another inc.ineq. index

Please accept my apology if what I'm doing is improper: I made another wealth distribution index, which I hope is better then Gini etc, or at least can be of use. Now I'm unclear on whether Wikipedia (should) list "common" knowledge, or "all" knowledge. In the first case, it should probably not be listed, though I'm neither sure whether this index already exists. I can imagine someone might view this as an attempt to make advertisements. Please don't be insulted, I'm only trying to improve things.

Index: 2 * Sum { .5 ^ ( Average-Data / Element-Data ) } / Total-Elements-N

I've converted this into a C program (free[soft]ware) for convenience: http://www.xs4all.nl/~joshb/cc/distribution.html I've called it "naddi", ``normalized average data distribution index. Since it might be unknown (unproven), please verify before adding. Jos Boersema (joshb@ -REDUCESPAM- xs4all.nl) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.127.225.147 (talk) 12:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Income distribution measures

The concept of inoome distribution and inequaliity is very important and one that needs further research....I hoped to see the content cover measures that have been presented and used at least mention, how these are used and whether important. Growth economists are interested in analytic forms that can be incorporated into growth models - since income distribution is of paramount importance to long term economic growth along with aging / demographics. 1- why important, 2- how measured, 3- what are the measures, 4- how are they used.

Analytically the important properties are 1- range of the measure - capable of describing extremes normally encountered in economies, 2- scalability - the measure remains the same if all recipients receive the same % increase in incomes, 3- captures wealth transfers

Beyond Lorenz curves and Ginis the analytic forms that have been used include

lognormal log logistic Singh Maddala Dagum 4 parameter Champernowne 5 parameter

Dbecher-hamburg 22:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)