Gini coefficient

Corrado Gini, inventor of the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, died. How does it work, asks Chris Stokel-Walker. When Italian statistician - and former fascist - Corrado Gini died in Rome on 13 March 1965, he could not have known that 50 years on, the UN would still use his name in their annual rankings of nations. "The Gini coefficient provides an index to measure inequality," says Antonio Cabrales, a professor of economics at University College London. It is a way of comparing how distribution of income in a society compares with a similar society in which everyone earned exactly the same amount. Inequality on the Gini scale is measured between 0, where everybody is equal, and 1, where all the country's…

be tied to some of the key concepts from the class readings, particularly on the comparison of national systems of political economy. Methodology For data sampling, I have selected four developed countries and two emerging countries i.e. US, Japan, Germany, Sweden, China and India. The time scale chosen for the analysis is 1990-2006, to coincide with the rise of globalization and due to data availability. The metric I utilized to track income inequality is the Gini coefficient (0 represents…

Government taxation and government benefits attempts to push the curve inward. Lorenz curve measures income equality distribution. The Gini coefficient measures the area between the 45-degree line and the Lorenz Curve divided by the entire area between the 45-degree line, where 0 equals absolute even distribution of income/equality. With that said: 1. Table 4.2 shows that Gini coefficient has increased from .349 in 1970 to .469 in 2005, indicating that income inequality in the has been a.…

policies set by Russia and China and patron-clientelism are no exception. Fiscal policies dictate how much the government spends and how much it taxes. A key difference between a capitalist state and a communist state is that a communist state holds more control over its economy through more government spending and taxation. China’s current economy relies on exports and construction, both areas that the government has great control over. Russia current economy relies on oil and mineral exports,…

get out of poverty. But there are people still suffering from absolute poverty from long-term unemployed, low-income households, rural-urban migrant workers and farmers living in rural areas today. The incomes of the poor have been growing, yet it appears that the rich are also getting richer much faster. This is due to development policies that favor only in heavy industry, cities and special economic zones in coastal areas. As a result, urban residents earned approximately twice more than…

Inequality will be produced between states, but also within states among different classes. First, this paper will examine inequality within state borders. The Gini coefficient is a tool used to measure the income distribution within the country. A Gini coefficient of 0 means equal distribution of income, while a Gini coefficient of 1 is the most unequal distribution. When the income data is examined in quintiles, one will see inequality rising. The interesting factor being income inequality…

will be used to not only draw on past trends in income distribution, but also aim to ultimately shed profound insight on “how the present inequality arose and how income inequality might be reduced in the future” [1]. Unlike the Nordic countries and Continental Europe, the United States had much higher income inequality, ranking 30th among the 40 selected world countries in 2010 (refer to Chart 1). This exposes the growing challenge that countries face in reducing overall inequality. For…

features: First, the unit of analysis is either the household versus the individual level. “If as usual the case, poor households have more members than more affluent households, the distribution of income at the household level will be more equal than that computed at the individual level. Therefore, in our regression analysis we expect to find that the Gini coefficients are greater (income distribution is more unequal) in countries that report data at the individual level” Second, if income…

pg.1856). The main population that was being surveyed were individuals that are 18 years of age or older and lived in a private residence that included a telephone landline. The response rate of the total population of 8688 people was 50% in the United States and 66% in Canada(Mcgrail et al., 2009, pg.1856). To measure the outcome variable of health for this study, the Human Utilities Index was used because it is a very good indicator of health and has been used before in studies of population…

of the lower middle class to undertake investments in human capital or others” and “high wealth concentration can weaken potential growth” (Mitchell). By comparing our income inequality to that of other nations, the U.S. is able to create a better understanding of the areas that they need to improve and strengthen in order to become more equal. Additionally, the OECD also describes how countries are compared and measured by a standard index called the Gini coefficient (Ross). A Gini value of 100…