Citation:
Spanish Economic Review, 2001, v. 3, n. 3, pp. 151-175
ISSN:
1435-5469
DOI:
10.1007/PL00011440
Sponsor:
This work has been completed under the research programme of the Cátedra Gumersindo de Azcárate,
financed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. It has been presented in the 1996 meeting of
the network “Distribution and Redistribution of Income”, in Bordeaux, financed by European Communities
(Contract #ERBCHRXCT940647). Financial help from Project PB96-0118 of the Spanish
DGES is also acknowledged
In this paper we apply decomposition methods to analyze some of the factors accounting for the decrease in household expenditures inequality in Spain during the 1980s. We adopt a simple one-parameter model in which equivalence scales depend only on household sIn this paper we apply decomposition methods to analyze some of the factors accounting for the decrease in household expenditures inequality in Spain during the 1980s. We adopt a simple one-parameter model in which equivalence scales depend only on household size. Then we propose an inequality decomposition method which minimizes equivalence scales' potential contamination problems. We find that most of the change in overall inequality is due to a reduction in the within-group term in the partition by household size. The bulk of this reduction is accounted for by changes at the lower tail of the distribution in the partitions by the socioeconomic category and educational level of the household head. These two findings are independent of the equivalence scales parameter.[+][-]
Description:
The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com