Income Stratification and Income Inequality

Abstract

This paper develops a new index of stratification that highlights the distinction between inequality and stratification. The stratification index captures the extent to which population subgroups occupy distinct strata within an overall distribution. The indices are group specific and control for group size. A weighted sum of group stratification indices is the third term that, together with between‐group inequality and a weighted sum of within‐group inequality adds to the overall Gini index of inequality.

Reinterpreting between-group inequality

“…16 This can conventionally be interpreted as suggesting that race or ethnicity is of limited relevance to an understanding of inequality in these two countries. 17 However, in Panama, observed inequality between ethnic sub-groups accounts for about a third of 'maximum possible' inequality between such sub-groups, while in Brazil the conclusion based on our measure is only slightly different from that which is obtained from the standard calculation.…”

Spatial decomposition of inequality

“…More recent developments include Silber (1989), Yitzhaki and Lerman (1991), Yitzhaki (1994) and Sastry and Kelkar (1994).…”

The Equality of Distribution of Education Resources—The Case of 96 Universities in the US

“…There are diverse way to decompose Gini coefficient, such as the method putted forward by Zhang and Li (2002) [15], Yitzhaki and Lerman (1991) [16]. In this paper, we use the decomposing Gini coefficient proposed by Anthony Shorrocks (2005) [17] because of the reasonable interpretation of R to avoid the existence of overlapping data and a biased result.…”