The current financial turbulence in Europe inspires and perhaps requires researchers to rethink how to measure incomes, wealth, and other parameters of interest to policy-makers and others. The noticeable increase in disparities between less and more fortunate individuals suggests that measures based upon comparing the incomes of less fortunate with the mean of the entire population may not be adequate. The classical Gini and related indices of economic inequality, however, are based exactly on such comparisons. It is because of this reason that in this paper we explore and contrast the classical Gini index with a new Zenga index, the latter being based on comparisons of the means of less and more fortunate sub-populations, irrespectively, of the threshold that might be used to delineate the two sub-populations. The empirical part of the paper is based on the 2001 wave of the European Community Household Panel data set provided by EuroStat. Even though sample sizes appear to be large, we supplement the estimated Gini and Zenga indices with measures of variability in the form of normal, t-bootstrap, and bootstrap bias-corrected and accelerated (BCa) confidence intervals.

Greselin, F., Pasquazzi, L., Zitikis, R. (2013). Contrasting the Gini and Zenga indices of economic inequality. JOURNAL OF APPLIED STATISTICS, 40(2), 282-297 [10.1080/02664763.2012.740627].

Contrasting the Gini and Zenga indices of economic inequality

GRESELIN, FRANCESCA;PASQUAZZI, LEO;
2013

Abstract

The current financial turbulence in Europe inspires and perhaps requires researchers to rethink how to measure incomes, wealth, and other parameters of interest to policy-makers and others. The noticeable increase in disparities between less and more fortunate individuals suggests that measures based upon comparing the incomes of less fortunate with the mean of the entire population may not be adequate. The classical Gini and related indices of economic inequality, however, are based exactly on such comparisons. It is because of this reason that in this paper we explore and contrast the classical Gini index with a new Zenga index, the latter being based on comparisons of the means of less and more fortunate sub-populations, irrespectively, of the threshold that might be used to delineate the two sub-populations. The empirical part of the paper is based on the 2001 wave of the European Community Household Panel data set provided by EuroStat. Even though sample sizes appear to be large, we supplement the estimated Gini and Zenga indices with measures of variability in the form of normal, t-bootstrap, and bootstrap bias-corrected and accelerated (BCa) confidence intervals.
Articolo in rivista - Articolo scientifico
Gini index; Zenga index; Lorenz curve; Zenga curve; economic inequality; point estimate; confidence interval
English
6-nov-2012
2013
40
2
282
297
none
Greselin, F., Pasquazzi, L., Zitikis, R. (2013). Contrasting the Gini and Zenga indices of economic inequality. JOURNAL OF APPLIED STATISTICS, 40(2), 282-297 [10.1080/02664763.2012.740627].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/41493
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