Top Incomes and the Measurement of Inequality in Egypt
By all accounts, income inequality in
Egypt is low and had been declining during the decade that
preceded the 2011 revolution. As the Egyptian revolution was
partly motivated by claims of social injustice and
inequalities, this seems at odds with a low level of income
inequality. Moreover, while income inequality shows a
decline between 2000 and 2009, the World Values Surveys
indicate that the aversion to inequality has significantly
increased during the same period and for all social groups.
This paper utilizes a range of recently developed
statistical techniques to assess the true value of income
inequality in the presence of a range of possible
measurement issues related to top incomes, including item
and unit non-response, outliers and extreme observations,
and atypical top income distributions. The analysis finds
that correcting for unit non-response significantly
increases the estimate of inequality by just over 1
percentage point, that the Egyptian distribution of top
incomes follows rather closely the Pareto distribution, and
that the inverted Pareto coefficient is located around
median values when compared with 418 household surveys
worldwide. Hence, income inequality in Egypt is confirmed to
be low while the distribution of top incomes is not atypical
compared with what Pareto had predicted and compared with
other countries in the world. This would suggest that the
increased frustration with income inequality voiced by
Egyptians and measured by the World Values Surveys is driven
by factors other than income inequality.
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Bibliographic Details
| Main Authors: |
Hlasny, Vladimir,
Verme, Paolo |
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| Language: | English
en_US |
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| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013-08
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| Subjects: | AGGREGATE INCOME,
AVERAGE INCOME,
BENCHMARK,
CASH TRANSFERS,
COUNTERFACTUAL,
DATA QUALITY,
DATA SET,
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES,
DEVELOPMENT POLICY,
DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION,
DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME,
DIVIDENDS,
EARNING,
ECONOMETRICS,
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY,
ECONOMIC REVIEW,
ECONOMIC STUDIES,
EMPIRICAL PURPOSES,
EMPIRICAL SECTION,
EXPECTED VALUE,
EXPLANATORY POWER,
EXPLANATORY VARIABLES,
FUNCTIONAL FORM,
GDP,
GDP PER CAPITA,
GINI COEFFICIENT,
GINI INDEX,
GROWTH RATES,
HIGH INCOMES,
HOUSEHOLD BUDGET,
HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION,
HOUSEHOLD DATA,
HOUSEHOLD INCOME,
HOUSEHOLD SIZE,
HOUSEHOLD SURVEY,
HOUSEHOLD SURVEY DATA,
HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS,
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT,
INCOME,
INCOME BIAS,
INCOME DATA,
INCOME DISTRIBUTION,
INCOME GROWTH,
INCOME INEQUALITY,
INCOME LEVELS,
INCOME SHARES,
INCOMES,
INEQUALITY,
INEQUALITY ESTIMATES,
INEQUALITY MEASURE,
INEQUALITY MEASUREMENT,
LINEAR MODEL,
LORENZ CURVE,
LORENZ CURVES,
LOW INCOME,
MEAN INCOME,
MEAN INCOMES,
MEASURES OF POVERTY,
MEASURING INEQUALITY,
MEASURING POVERTY,
NEGATIVE RELATIONSHIP,
POLICY DISCUSSIONS,
POLICY IMPLICATIONS,
POLICY RESEARCH,
POOR,
POVERTY MEASUREMENT,
POVERTY MEASURES,
POVERTY REDUCTION,
PRIMARY SAMPLING UNITS,
PSU,
RANDOM SAMPLING,
RELATIVE IMPORTANCE,
RURAL,
RURAL AREAS,
RURAL RESIDENTS,
SALARIES,
SAVINGS,
SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS,
WAGES,
WEALTH, |
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/08/18089005/top-incomes-measurement-inequality-egypt
https://hdl.handle.net/10986/15924
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