WIID Companion (March 2021): global income distribution

Author(s):  
Carlos Gradín

This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the UNU-WIDER World Income Inequality Database. It aims at facilitating the analysis of inequality as well as progress in achieving the global goal of reducing inequality within and across countries. This new dataset includes an annual series reporting the income distribution at the percentile level for all citizens in the world, regardless of where they live, from 1950 to the present. The global distribution is displayed along with the country-level information used to produce it. The dataset also includes estimates of various global absolute and relative inequality measures, and the income share of key population groups. All estimates are further disaggregated by the contribution of inequalities within and between countries, as well as by each country’s geographical region and income group. While previous technical notes described the selection of country income distribution series and the integration and standardization process to overcome the heterogeneity in original welfare concepts and other methods, I here describe all the necessary additional steps and assumptions made to construct the new global dataset.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Gradín

This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the World Income Inequality Database. It aims at facilitating the analysis of inequality as well as progress in achieving the global goal of reducing inequality within and across countries. This new dataset also includes an annual series reporting the income distribution at the percentile level for all citizens in the world, regardless of where they live, since 1950 to present. A previous note described the selection of income distribution series. Since these series may differ across welfare concepts and other methods used, this technical note describes the second stage, constructing integrated and standardized country series. It discusses all the necessary adjustments conducted to construct the final series for each country, with consistent estimates of the distribution of net income per capita over the entire period for which information is available. This is mainly divided into two stages. First, integrating country series by interlinking series that overlap over time, then using a more general regression-based approach.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Gradín

This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the World Income Inequality Database (WIID). It aims at facilitating the analysis of inequality as well as progress in achieving the global goal of reducing inequality within and across countries. This new dataset also includes an annual series reporting the income distribution at the percentile level for all citizens in the world, regardless of where they live, from 1950 to the present. This technical note describes the first stage in constructing the first version of the companion datasets: data selection. It provides an overview of the approach followed in the selection of the series from different sources with information on income distribution and inequality that best represent each country and period. It also discusses the general criteria used and their implementation, which are illustrated with a few country examples.


2019 ◽  
pp. 50-65
Author(s):  
Francesco Farina ◽  
Chiara Assunta Ricci

The scientific evaluation of the relationship between growth, redistribution, and the income share of the middle class is still in its infancy. This article aims to investigate how the drivers of economic growth impinge on market income distribution and how the middle class has a role in deciding the level of redistribution. Our strategy is to dodge the reverse causality problem, stemming from the bi-directional relation between income distribution and growth, by exploiting the peculiar feature of different indicators of income dispersion focused on the middle income group. The findings reveal that market forces and redistributive policies are both pivotal in shaping the evolution of income dispersion and in particular the income share of the middle class, over the growth process. The ability of redistributive policies to counteract the ongoing increase in income inequality seems to depend not only on the political pressure exerted by an impoverishing median voter but also on the expansion of fiscal revenues after sustained Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.


2018 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-260
Author(s):  
Anna M. Galazka ◽  
Malcolm J. Beynon ◽  
Tim Edwards

This article examines the variation in the level of use of information and communication technologies by national bodies of labour administrations across 81 different countries. Extending empirical research on the state of information and communication technology use, it introduces a prototype index of country-level information and communication technology use. The index allows for the exposition of the contributions of sub-dimensions of information and communication technology use, including labour inspection, public employment services and labour dispute prevention and settlement. Graphical evidence showing sub-index and final index formulations for individual countries is given, along with graphical evidence of the country-level ranking and geographical variations of information and communication technology use (including the sub-dimensions of this use). The future potential of the prescribed approach is demonstrated by offering possible explanations behind the results on a sample of countries.


Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Etienne ◽  
Ali Skalli ◽  
Ioannis Theodossiou

Using the European Community Household Panel (1994-2001), random effects models are estimated to assess the effect of income inequality on individuals' health. The individual's health status is measured by self assessment responses and by relatively objective measures of health. Country-level inequality measures are used after controlling for regional fixed effects. This implies that country level factors are the relevant approximations of individuals' reference groups. The results suggest that income inequality harms not only the health of the least well off but also the health of all individuals regardless of their position in the income distribution.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 4308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepal Doshi ◽  
Matthias Garschagen

The most vulnerable countries often face a double burden in relation to climate change—they are at high risk to the impacts and are least equipped to cope and adapt. Global climate policy since the Convention in 1992, until most recently with the global goal on adaptation in the Paris Agreement, has manifested the importance of prioritizing adaptation support to the most vulnerable countries. The main objective of this study is to understand the enabling and constraining factors that play a role in the process of allocating and accessing global adaptation assistance. We adopted a mixed-methods approach combining two major streams of analysis. First, this paper aims to track bilateral adaptation finance to all so-called developing countries, as bilateral support has been the largest share of international adaptation finance. Second, the paper draws on semi-structured expert interviews and looks at the country level to identify the factors beyond vulnerability that play a role in the distribution of adaptation finance from a recipient’s and a donor’s perspective, using India and Germany as examples. The analysis yields three main findings. First, countries’ vulnerability as measured by standard metrics does not seem to be the prime factor explaining the distribution of available bilateral adaptation assistance. This is in contrast to the political narrative in the emerging climate finance architecture. Second, interview data identified other factors beyond vulnerability that play a role from a donor perspective, such as the perceived capacity to manage and implement projects, the commitment given to climate change and other political priorities. Third, from a recipient perspective, rather than its vulnerability level in a global comparison, strong institutional capacity played a prominent role in attracting adaptation finance. Looking out into the future, the findings underscore the practical and political challenges in relation to a vulnerability-oriented prioritization of funding and they point towards the need to increase countries’ capacities to attract and manage international adaptation support. The findings also raise questions on how to overcome the vexing conflict in the emerging adaptation finance architecture between accommodating for donors’ requirements of high fiduciary standards and enabling access by the most vulnerable countries, which are often short of resources and institutional capacities.


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