Gender and income inequality in the UK 1968–90: the feminization of earnings or of poverty?

This paper uses data from the Family Expenditure Survey for five selected years between 1968 and 1990 to examine trends in the income distribution in the UK, highlighting the role of women's labour force participation and earnings. The increased labour force participation of married women (especially mothers of young children in the 1980s) made a greater contribution to the decline of the 'traditional' male breadwinner family than the increased number of lone parents. The lower half of the distribution of weekly earnings became increasingly dominated by women. Though women's weekly earnings remained low relative to men's, the increase in their participation meant that, over the period, an increased share of family income came from women's labour market income: in 1990 nearly a quarter of the income of families with children came from women's earnings. Women's earnings were an important factor in keeping families out of poverty. There was no trend towards increasing feminization of poverty over the sample period. Adult women were somewhat more likely to be poor than adult men were, but female-headed families were very much more likely to be in poverty, and much more dependent on state benefits, than male-headed families were. Women's increased role in the labour market affected those in male-headed families more than those in female-headed families. Alongside a broad tendency for women's earnings to reduce poverty and inequality, there is evidence that the female population has become more economically polarized.     

时间和收入来源对城市居民收入分配差距的影响——对深圳市城市居民家庭收入变动性和收入来源的实证研究

 目前对中国收入分配差距的研究大多是静态的测度某一时点的居民收入不平等程度，缺乏对收入随时间变化的模式和收入来源结构的深入研究。本文使用深圳市2005年和2006年的城市居民抽样调查数据对中国城市居民家庭的收入变动性和收入来源结构进行了研究。收入变动性和收入来源多元化从本质上反映了机会公平的程度，深圳市的实证数据表明，现阶段中国城市居民的收入变动性和收入来源多元化使长期收入不平等程度小于短期收入不平等程度，家庭总收入的不平等程度小于单一收入来源的不平等程度。因此，进一步深化改革，建立完善的市场经济体系，关注机会公平是在收入分配领域构建和谐社会的有效途径。     

On square ordinal contingency tables: a comparison of social class and income mobility for the same individuals

Summary.  Square contingency tables with matching ordinal rows and columns arise in particular as empirical transition matrices and the paper considers these in the context of social class and income mobility tables. Such tables relate the socio-economic position of parents to the socio-economic position of their child in adulthood. The level of association between parental and child socio-economic position is taken as a measure of mobility. Several approaches to analysis are described and illustrated by UK data in which interest focuses on comparisons of social class and income mobility tables that are derived from the same individuals. Account is taken of the use of the same individuals in the two tables. Additionally comparisons over time are considered.     

Maximum entropy estimation of income share function from generalized Gini index

Following Sir Anthony and Atkinson who started thinking about the insensitivity of the Gini index to income shares of the lower and the upper income groups, a generalization of the classical Gini index was introduced by Kakwani, Donaldson, Weymark and Yitzhaki which is sensitive to both high and low incomes. In this paper, the maximum entropy method is used to estimate the underlying true income share function based on the limited information of the generalized Gini index about the income shares of a population's percentiles. The income share function is estimated through maximizing both the Shannon entropy and the second-order entropy. In the end, through parametric bootstrap and analyzing a real dataset, the results are compared with the estimator of the share function, which is obtained based on the total information. In contrast to the classic Gini index, the derived share function based on the generalized Gini index provides more accurate approximations for income shares of the lower and the upper percentiles.     

A Unified Approach to Estimating and Testing Income Distributions With Grouped Data

We propose a unified approach that is flexibly applicable to various types of grouped data for estimating and testing parametric income distributions. To simplify the use of our approach, we also provide a parametric bootstrap method and show its asymptotic validity. We also compare this approach with existing methods for grouped income data, and assess their finite-sample performance by a Monte Carlo simulation. For empirical demonstrations, we apply our approach to recovering China's income/consumption distributions from a sequence of income/consumption share tables and the U.S. income distributions from a combination of income shares and sample quantiles. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Stochastic dominance amongst swedish income distributions

:Sweden's income distribution for the whole population and for subgroups, including its immigants, has been extensively studied. The interest in this area has grown with increasing availability of data, including panels. The previous studies are based on indices of inequality or mobility. While indices are useful for complete ordering and have an air of "decisiveness" about them, they lack universal acceptance of the value judgements inherent to the welfare functions that underlay any index. In contrast, uniformpartial order relations are studied in this paper which rank welfare situations over very wide classes of welfare functions. We conduct bootstrap tests for the existence of first and second order stochastic dominance amongst Sweden's income distributions over time and for several subgroups of immigrants. Analysis of immigrant's income is motivated by the fact that the development of income for immigrants has been different and strongly affected by their length of residence and countries of origin. We consider several non-consecutive waves of a panel of incomes in Sweden. Two income definitions are developed. One is pre-transfers and taxes, gross income, the other is a post-transfers and taxes, disposable income. The comparison of the distribution of these two variables affords a partial view of Sweden's welfare system. We have focused on the incomes of Swede's and immigrant groups of single individuals identified by country of origin, length of residence, age, education, gender, marital status and other relevant characteristics. We find that first order dominance is rare, but second order relations hold in several cases, especially amongst disposable income distributions. Sweden's incomes and welfare policies favor the elderly, females, larger families, and longer periods of residency. We find, in general, the higher the educational credentials, the higher is the burden of this equalization policy.     

Income distribution in Italy: A nonparametric analysis

Using kernel density estimation, this paper describes the real income distribution and how it evolved over time in Italy. Data are cross-sectional samples from the population of Italian households during the period 1987–1998. A non parametric test is applied to asses whether the observed changes in the distribution are statistically significant, while the presence of more than one mode in the distributions is investigated by a bootstrap test. Empirical results show that the Italian income distribution significantly changed over time, accompanied by a decreasing inequality pattern until 1991 and a subsequent rise. No marked income gains were perceived, while the real “losers” of the decade seem to be households in the middle-upper income range. Supported by the MURST project 98-13-45. We would like to thank Nicholas Longford for his precious support and encouragement, two anonymous referees, the participants of the seminar at CEPS/INSTEAD in Luxembarg, and of the 40 ^th SIS Conference in Florence, for helpful comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.     

Evolution and decomposition of income inequality in Italy, 1991–2004

The aggregate measures of inequality do not display any significant trend in the concentration of equivalent income among the Italian households in the early 2000s. Yet some sizeable shifts in the income distribution seem to suggest that the relative positions of groups of households have changed on the income scale. Through a decomposition analysis of Gini index by income source we find that in the more recent years the income from self-employment is the main disequalizing factor. The decomposition by social groups provides the evidence that it is the group of self-employed and managers who have gained more ground on the income scale. This work has been debated by the three Authors under the coordination of Claudio Quintano. Rosalia Castellano has written Sect. 1, while Andrea Regoli has written Sects. 2 to 6.     

我国35个大中城市房价-持久收入比研究

房价收入比是反映居民购房可支付能力的重要指标。为了更真实准确反映我国居民长期承受的购房负担,本文基于持久收入假说,利用我国35个大中城市数据,建立状态空间模型,估计出持久收入意义下的房价收入比,通过情景分析确定其合理上限,并分析主要特征。研究表明：①我国房价-持久收入比的合理上限为7.6,2002-2013年35个大中城市的房价-持久收入比均值是9.2,其中28个城市已超过该上限,比值最高的北京已达到14.9;②城市越发达,则房价-持久收入比越高,居民需要承受的购房压力越大,且在时间趋势上,一线与二三线城市间的差距呈现扩大趋势;③在地理分布上,我国东部、中部、东北地区、西部大中城市的房价-持久收入比呈现从高到低的排列顺序;④相比于传统方法中根据可支配收入测算的房价收入比,房价-持久收入比与其约有10%的差异。当前我国政府应采取有效措施继续限制房价,减轻居民购房负担。     

A selection criterion for choosing between functional forms of income distribution

The value of Elderton's k - criterion can be bounded for a given pdf. This paper presents these bounds for the most widely used distribution functions for income and computes the value of K for household incomes as reported in the Consumer Population Survey. The variance for theK are also estimated using the bootstrap, jackknife and delta methods. We find that the K can be used to narrow the field of potential pdfs for income and that all three methods for estimating the variance coincide in flagging low precision in the estimated K.     

A new approach to the measurement of polarization for grouped data

In this paper we develop a measure of polarization for discrete distributions of non-negative grouped data. The measure takes into account the relative sizes and homogeneities of individual groups as well as the heterogeneities between all pairs of groups. It is based on the assumption that the total polarization within the distribution can be understood as a function of the polarizations between all pairs of groups. The measure allows information on existing groups within a population to be used directly to determine the degree of polarization. Thus the impact of various classifications on the degree of polarization can be analysed. The treatment of the distribution’s total polarization as a function of pairwise polarizations allows statements concerning the effect of an individual pair or an individual group on the total polarization.     

Some Sampling Properties of a Model for Income Distribution

A recently proposed model for describing the distribution of income over a population, based on the Burr distribution, has been shown to fit better than the commonly used lognormal or gamma distributions. The current article extends that analysis by deriving the large-sample properties of the maximum likelihood estimates for this three-parameter model. Consequently, resulting confidence intervals for some measures of income inequality (including the Gini index) are used to further test the model's validity, as well as to examine apparent trends in inequality over time. Since these properties depend on the way the income data are grouped and censored, implications for choosing data-report intervals can be analyzed. Specifically, a choice between two common methods of reporting the data is shown to have an important impact on Gini index estimates.     

Has the national minimum wage reduced UK wage inequality?

Summary.  The paper investigates the effect on the wage distribution of the introduction, in April 1999, of the national minimum wage (NMW) in the UK. Because of the structure of UK earnings statistics, it is not straightforward to investigate this and various methods for adjusting the published statistics are discussed. The main conclusions are that the NMW does have a detectable effect on the wage distribution and that compliance with the NMW is widespread but the effect is limited because the NMW has been set at a level such that only 6–7% of workers are directly affected and the NMW has had virtually no effect on the pay of workers who are not directly affected. Furthermore, virtually all the changes occurred within 2 months of the introduction in April 1999 and its effect declined over time from April 1999 to September 2001 as the minimum wage was not uprated in line with the increase in average earnings. The more substantial increase in the NMW in October 2001 partially, but not wholly, restored some of this decline in impact.     

经济地位对信用卡逾期的影响

我国信用卡业务的迅猛发展助推了消费经济的快速发展，但信用卡的逾期行为不容忽视。收入代表了一个人的经济地位，是信用卡按时还款的保障。本文基于某商业银行信用卡客户的逾期数据，以持卡人的经济地位为视角，分析了经济地位对信用卡逾期行为的影响。研究结果表明，我国商业银行信用卡持卡人的逾期行为具有显著的经济特征，收入对信用卡逾期的影响呈“U”型的非线性特征，即收入较低和收入较高的持卡人逾期的可能性较高，收入处于中间的持卡人逾期的可能性较低。进一步的研究发现，中年群体、工作单位稳定者、有房者会降低经济地位对信用卡逾期行为的非线性影响，而账龄较长的持卡人提升了这种影响。本文的研究为全社会建立良好的信用卡用卡环境，商业银行高效处理信用卡逾期，改进和完善商业银行信用卡风险管理提供了关键证据。     

劳动份额“ 型”演进规律

 要素分配是收入分配研究的基础和逻辑起点,具有重要的理论意义与政策价值。劳动份额演进特征,集中反映收入分配随经济发展的内在关系,是要素分配研究的核心议题。文章基于国际与历史比较视角,挖掘工业革命以来主要发达国家要素分配数据,发现劳动份额具有“ 型”演进规律,“水平型”和“U型”规律均可视为其阶段性特例。以此为经验标准,审视我国要素分配结构变化态势,剖析其对一般演进规律的偏离,并探讨其政策涵义。     

Inference for Income Distributions Using Grouped Data

We develop a general approach to estimation and inference for income distributions using grouped or aggregate data that are typically available in the form of population shares and class mean incomes, with unknown group bounds. We derive generic moment conditions and an optimal weight matrix that can be used for generalized method-of-moments (GMM) estimation of any parametric income distribution. Our derivation of the weight matrix and its inverse allows us to express the seemingly complex GMM objective function in a relatively simple form that facilitates estimation. We show that our proposed approach, which incorporates information on class means as well as population proportions, is more efficient than maximum likelihood estimation of the multinomial distribution, which uses only population proportions. In contrast to the earlier work of Chotikapanich, Griffiths, and Rao, and Chotikapanich, Griffiths, Rao, and Valencia, which did not specify a formal GMM framework, did not provide methodology for obtaining standard errors, and restricted the analysis to the beta-2 distribution, we provide standard errors for estimated parameters and relevant functions of them, such as inequality and poverty measures, and we provide methodology for all distributions. A test statistic for testing the adequacy of a distribution is proposed. Using eight countries/regions for the year 2005, we show how the methodology can be applied to estimate the parameters of the generalized beta distribution of the second kind (GB2), and its special-case distributions, the beta-2, Singh–Maddala, Dagum, generalized gamma, and lognormal distributions. We test the adequacy of each distribution and compare predicted and actual income shares, where the number of groups used for prediction can differ from the number used in estimation. Estimates and standard errors for inequality and poverty measures are provided. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Multiple imputation: an alternative to top coding for statistical disclosure control

Summary.  Top coding of extreme values of variables like income is a common method of statistical disclosure control, but it creates problems for the data analyst. The paper proposes two alternative methods to top coding for statistical disclosure control that are based on multiple imputation. We show in simulation studies that the multiple-imputation methods provide better inferences of the publicly released data than top coding, using straightforward multiple-imputation methods of analysis, while maintaining good statistical disclosure control properties. We illustrate the methods on data from the 1995 Chinese household income project.     

中国城镇居民收入差异比较——基于不同统计视角的解释

基于两种不同的统计视角,采用锡尔系数与基尼系数来一同分析中国城镇居民收入差异。以行政区划为统计基础的中国城镇居民统计数据显示了1985—2008年中国区域间（省际间）城镇居民的高低收入差异不明显,处于高度均衡状态,1994年前,中国区域间（省际间）的城镇居民收入差异有所扩大,但1994年后。中国区域间（省际间）的城镇居民收入差异趋于稳定;以家庭户为统计基础的统计数据则得到了相反的结论,1985年以来中国城镇居民收入的高低差异不断扩大,2002年基尼系数已增加到0．40701,已进入贫富差距的警戒线,此后一直大于0．4,处于收入差距偏大的层次。现实中,只有以单个的人为单位来进行统计。然后对人与人之间的收入差距情况进行全体测算,才会得出最完善的结论。     

流转税和所得税的福利效应研究

 本文根据我国城市（镇）不同收入阶层1999年至2008年的支出结构数据及现金收入和支出统计状况,测算出我国城镇居民消费支出的有效税率②和所得税额;利用跨期消费决策的两期模型,构造居民消费效用函数,即消费者的福利函数,测算出我国流转税和所得税的福利损失（成本）。结果显示：我国居民消费符合边际消费倾向递减规律;不同收入阶层的消费时间偏好不同,收入水平越低越倾向于当前消费;流转税具有明显的累退效应,而所得税的累进效应,特别是个人所得税的累进效应不明显,使得我国当前的税制结构对收入分配的调节力度不够。     

收入增长、收入波动与城镇居民财产积累

本文根据1995年和2002年住户调查数据,讨论了居民收入增长、收入波动以及住户特征对于城镇居民财产积累的影响。本文发现在1995年的家庭财产持有行为中已经具有明显的预防性动机,收入波动对于家庭的财产积累行为具有重要影响,而2002年中这种效应则有所下降。城镇居民在这一期间持有财产数量的增长主要是由收入增长所解释。此外,预防性动机在整个财产分布中的变化趋势在两个年份中是相反的,1995年财产分布低分位点钟具有更强的预防性动机,而2002年则相反,预防性动机随着财产分布分位点的上升而增强。如果控制收入、收入波动以及生命周期等储蓄性因素,户主特征对于财产积累的解释作用非常有限。