A new ordered family of Lorenz curves with an application to measuring income inequality and poverty in rural China

The most common data source on income distribution in China is grouped data. When income data is in grouped form, some acceptable Lorenz model is needed to approximate the underlying Lorenz curve. This paper presents a new family of Lorenz curves and applies the main model in our proposed family of Lorenz curves to income data for rural China over the period 1980 to 2006. We find that the income share of the rural population at the low end of the income scale has been shrinking, income inequality in rural China has increased over time and that income inequality has impeded attempts to reduce poverty. However, the welfare of the rural population is still improving in terms of the generalized Lorenz dominance criterion.     

Statistical inference for Lorenz curves using simulated critical values

This paper suggests an improvement in the traditional testing procedure of dominance relations associated with empirical Lorenz curves and their generalizations. This improvement is based on simulating the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic. The simulation approach asymptotically dominates the traditional approach since the traditional method for calculating critical values establishes an upper bound for the simulated critical value. A gain in power is demonstrated in the empirical part of the paper dealing with the evolution of the distribution of disposable income in Finland between 1971 and 1994.     

Regional Income Inequality and Welfare in China: A Dominance Analysis

Inference-based dominance analysis is applied to micro data containing comprehensive measures of rural and urban incomes in seven major regions of China. Ordinal inequality rankings are estimated for Lorenz curves of household income, per capita household income and square root equivalences scale adjusted income. Regional inequality is shown to be sensitive to the treatment of household size. The lack of reliable regional cost of living measures leads us to propose that entire food expenditure share quantile distributions be used as indicators of differences in well-being within and across regions. The results indicate that statistical rankings of Lorenz dominance and food share dominance are very different indicators of regional disparities in income and welfare in China. One urban region is shown to have been in the unenviable position in 1988 of being at the bottom of the Lorenz dominance ranking and tied for last in terms of food share dominance.     

Forecasting indicators of personal income differences

Forecasting of the distribution and differentiation parameters of personal cash income is discussed. Methods for forecasting parameters of population distribution by per capita income are proposed, and these parameters are correlated to predicted macroeconomic indices. Diagrams of transition to the Lorenz curve are presented. The dependence of income spread indices on parameters of income distribution of the population is established. Additional, more informative and accurate, income spread indices are proposed.     

Statistical Inferences for Testing Marginal Rank and (Generalized) Lorenz Dominances

This paper provides distribution-free inferences for testing marginal rank dominance and Lorenz, and generalized Lorenz dominances. Marginal dominances refer to ordinary dominance relationships holding between an income distribution and its dependent after-event distribution. Using the elegant Bahadur representation, I establish the asymptotic normal distributions of sample marginal changes and derive the variance–covariance structures. I also show that the inference procedures can be modified and applied to more general cases where samples are (partially) dependent. The approaches are illustrated by re-evaluating the marginal impacts of working wives on the U.S. family income distribution using 1990 census data.     

The Kuznets curve: Evidence from Prussia revisited

Conclusions To avoid confusion arising from mixing up methods, the methodological arsenal was restricted to the computation of percentiles as this was the favoured device in the Kuznets-paper. But with an increasing population the interpretation of rising percentiles is by no means straightforward (which is equally true with other measures of inequality). When the number of income-receiving units and their mean income are held constant, rising shares of the top-income receivers can be interpreted in terms of “rich people getting richer and poor people getting poorer”. But when both, the number of units and their mean income are rising, the interpretation of rising percentiles is quite a problem. For example, aggregating two populations with all percentiles alike (i.e. identical Lorenz curves) but different mean incomes would result in a greater population with increased shares of the top-income receivers and lessened shares of the low-income receivers (i.e. a Lorenz curve more close to the boundaries of the rectangle). It is obvious from this example that the welfare implications of increasing percentiles cannot be separated from the welfare implications of rising mean incomes. Especially, with rising populations and rising mean incomes the income shares of the top-income receivers may very well increase without any poor man getting poorer, so that not even Rawls [1971] would necessarily object to such a development. Bearing these limitations in mind, the outcomes of the previous sections may be summarized in confirming Kuznets’ surmise that income inequality in Prussia increased within the second half of the last century. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the peak was most probably reached around the turn of the century with the First World War merely fortifying the equalizing tendencies which originated from the economic development process itself.     

A lorenz curve based index of income stratification

Conclusion This paper introduced a method of calculating the proportion, and its standardized index, of the GINI coefficient that is due to the overlapping of the incomes of different groups in a population. This Lorenz curvebased index measures the degree to which all groups, collectively, form different strata in a population as opposed to the degree to which an individual group forms a stratum in the population. It is useful for describing the degree of integration or segregation in a population as opposed to the degree of integration or segregation of a group within a population. The new index was applied to distributions of wage and salary income for individuals and family income for households. The results indicate that racial/ethnic income stratification is more marked among men than women.     

The Median Voter According to GARP

This paper adapts the generalized axiom of revealed preference (GARP) empirical method to the public goods problem to test whether observed municipal public spending can be explained “as if” the city governments maximize the utility of the median income voter. It applies the test procedure for medium-size municipal governments in five Midwest states. The data are consistent with GARP and reveal that the local governments in the sample behave as if they maximize median voter utility once we control for the state-specific effects, government management structure, and population density.     

中国农村经济制度变迁与农民收入增长的实证研究——基于1978～2009年省际动态面板数据分析

本文通过对1978~2009年中国农村制度变迁与农村居民收入增长之间进行了理论和实证分析,将农村居民收入增长划分为五个不同的阶段,农村制度变迁对农民的收入增长具有阶段性的影响作用,农村制度变迁是农民收入增长的重要驱动力。并借助动态面板数据模型,对1978~2009年中国农村农作制度、农村价格制度、财税制度,以及农村人口变迁制度等制度因素对农村居民收入增长的影响进行实证分析和检验,由此建议应该把农村制度创新作为提高农民收入增长的突破口。     

An Exponential Family of Lorenz Curves

A new method for building parametric-functional families of Lorenz curves, generated from an initial Lorenz curve (which satisfies some regularity conditions), is presented. The method is applied to the exponential family since they use the exponential Lorenz curves as their generating curves. Several properties of these families are analyzed, including the population function, inequality measures, and Lorenz orderings. Finally, an application is presented for data from various countries. The family is shown to perform well in fitting the data across countries. The results are very robust across data sources.     

A distributional approach to comparing vulnerability,applied to rural provinces in Thailand and Vietnam

Vulnerability to poverty is an important social indicator of well-being. Yet, comparisons of vulnerability over time or space lack robustness as long as they are based on single measures or use specific poverty lines. We demonstrate that a distributional analysis, based on stochastic dominance orders, can help. Using data from six rural provinces of Thailand and Vietnam, we establish cumulative distribution functions for income and consumption at the provincial level and show how they can provide ethically robust vulnerability comparisons.     

地理空间溢出、禀赋条件差异与区域贫困集聚——基于空间计量模型的实证分析

在构建贫困集聚空间计量模型的基础上,依据31个省域2005-2010年统计数据,对我国区域贫困问题进行了实证分析。结果表明:各省区贫困发生具有显著空间依赖特征;贫困空间分布遵循"西高东低,梯次递减"规律;局部聚集呈现出"东冷(L-L),西热(H-H)"特点;纳入地理空间效应的实证结论更加稳健与科学,空间模型优于传统模型;经济发展水平、财政扶贫支出、市场化程度、公共服务供给、城镇化、人口聚集以及收入分配差距均对贫困发生、集聚施加影响,但影响模式、时效、强度及方向存在明显差别。     

Poverty, Place or Race: Causes of the Retail Gap in Smaller U.S. Cities

In this study we explore the possibility that any or all of three dimensions of the U.S. inner city, central location, relatively low income, and a relatively high percentage of minority residents, correlate with a relative lack of neighborhood retail services, the so-called retail gap. Our empirical analysis is based on zip code level data for 39 U.S. cities with populations from 50 to 225 thousand people. After specifying an empirical model based on hypotheses drawn from the urban economics, urban studies, and urban development literature, we test access to retail services using both geographical density and per capita retail measures. While several results from this study are worthy of discussion, our primary empirical finding is that neighborhoods with high percentages of African-Americans are systematically under-served by retail, all else equal, while Latino, low income, or otherwise centrally located neighborhoods are not. We then test a selection of product categories for retail density, finding some differing results by product category but verifying our more general conclusions for most products. Finally, we find that grocery stores have significantly smaller scale in African-American communities, a finding that provides partial support for the urban “food desert” hypothesis. These findings suggest that the inner city retail gap may be more of a racial than geographic issue, and that increased emphasis on racial composition is warranted in the retail development policies applied to smaller U.S. cities.     

City size,quality of life,and the urbanization deflator of the GNP: 1910-1984

The authors attempt to determine the net effect of city size on quality of life by developing a welfare measure of urbanization. "The estimation procedure suggested in the theoretical part of the paper (section II) is implemented in the empirical part (section III) using 1980 census data from the [U.S.] PUMS (Public Use Micro Data Sample). The results indicate there is no single optimal city size, but rather a worst city size, and about 90 percent of the U.S. population reside in cities smaller than worst city size. If quality of life is related to the degree of urbanization, then long-term trends in the locational distribution of the population should be accounted for in any welfare-oriented measure of national income. One application of our results is, as indicated, the derivation of a GNP welfare deflator reflecting changes in the degree of urbanization (section IV). The findings suggest an urban deflator on the order of six to seven percentage points, which is steadily increasing at a rate of about half a percentage point per decade."     

收入分配与中国居民消费——理论和基于中国的实证研究

本文研究了城乡收入差距扩大对中国居民消费需求的影响.基于生命周期框架的理论研究表明,收入水平越高,居民平均消费倾向和边际消费倾向越低;收入差距越大,居民消费需求越低.文章使用1978—2008年我国28个省、市、自治区的面板数据对理论模型进行了实证检验.结果显示,收入水平提高10000元,居民平均消费倾向下降25.6%,边际消费倾向下降7%;城乡收入差距扩大1单位,居民消费率下降6.5个百分点.数值模拟结果表明,城乡收入差距扩大导致居民消费率在2000—2008年间下降了3.42个百分点,解释了这一期间居民消费率下降的30.8%     

收入分配、医疗资源与人口健康:一个跨国研究

收入分配与人口健康的关系是一个争论已久的问题。本文在总结各种理论假说和以往实证研究的基础上,使用新的、质量较好的跨国面板数据,重新检验了收入分配与人口健康的关系。本文的分析重点有二:一是收入分配对人口健康的滞后影响;二是医疗资源在收入分配与人口健康的相关关系中所起的作用。本文的主要发现是,收入不均对人口健康的确有不利影响,但这种不利影响需要10年或更长的滞后期才能充分显现出来,这种滞后性是以往使用固定效应模型的跨国研究未能检测到收入不均与人口健康具有负相关关系的主要原因。此外,医疗资源(特别是初级医疗资源)人均拥有量对人口健康有积极作用;医疗资源有可能通过某种不可观察固定因素对收入分配与人口健康的关系发生影响。这些发现有助于澄清关于收入分配与人口健康关系的争论,对医疗政策也有重要参考价值。     

我国居民收入代际流动研究的科学计量学解读

收入代际流动程度较弱是我国转型期收入差距不断扩大的主要根源之一,为了系统梳理国内收入代际流动领域研究的发展脉络,了解研究热点和发展动向,从科学计量学的角度应用可视化技术分析近年来国内对收入代际流动的研究状况。通过检索CSSCI（1998—2011）获得有关收入代际流动研究的49篇文献与670篇引文,运用文献计量学与统计分析方法对这些文献数据从时间分布、期刊分布、作者与机构分布、基金项目与研究热点等多个维度进行计量分析：运用文献共被引分析方法与动态网络分析的信息可视化技术绘制我国收入代际流动领域的科学知识图谱,从而展示收入代际流动研究的关键节点、以及节点所代表的专家及其著作对该领域发展所起的重要作用,展现我国居民收入代际流动的知识基础与研究前沿,进而为我国收入代际流动研究提供思路与借鉴,推动相关研究领域理论与经验研究。     

Fertility,income distribution,and economic growth: theory and cross-country evidence

The authors perform discriminatory, empirical tests of a theoretical model that predicts that family size adversely affects output per capita and nonsteady state growth rates. Neoclassical models posit that adverse output and nonsteady growth rates are affected by labor force growth (LFG) or population growth (PG). This study tests whether family size (FS) will be more significant than LFG or PG in explaining differences in economic growth (EG) rates across countries during 1960-88. A proxy variable for the public education system was used to separate government interventions on human capital formation from market forces. Data were obtained for 73 countries, which exclude centrally planned economies, oil-producing countries, and those with less than 1 million population. The empirical test is run with 58-country, 45-country, and 96-country samples to test for robustness and reliability. The empirical test supports the theoretical model. It demonstrates that equal distribution of income and smaller FS enhance EG. With income inequality, the effect of FS was significant, and the effect of the LFG rate or PG rate was insignificant. With a given FS, LFG was positively correlated with EG. A reduction of the net fertility rate by one point would increase the worker output growth rate by 0.25%, and the differences in growth rates between high- and low-fertility countries would be 1%. An increase in the income share of the bottom 60% would increase the growth rate of worker output by about 1%. Higher investments in public or private education would be conducive to growth.     

基于粒子群优化算法的洛伦兹曲线参数估计及基尼系数的计算

根据已有洛伦兹曲线模型,应用粒子群优化算法对洛伦兹曲线参数进行估计。由拟合的洛伦兹曲线计算2002-2011年我国城镇和农村的基尼系数,再利用"分组加权法"得出我国总体的基尼系数。结果表明:粒子群优化算法可以有效地估计洛伦兹曲线中的参数;由该算法的估计参数所确定的洛伦兹曲线估算2002-2011年基尼系数,其变化趋势与其它预测相符。从而为洛伦兹曲线提供了可靠、有效的参数估计方法。     

我国CO2排放、能源消耗、经济增长和外贸依存度之间的关系——基于ARDL模型的实证研究

本文利用我国1971—2008年的样本数据,运用自回归分布滞后模型（ARDL）对我国的二氧化碳排放、能源消费、人均国民总收入、人均国民总收入的平方和外贸依存度之间的动态关系进行了计量研究。结果表明它们之间存在长期的均衡关系。格兰杰因果检验表明,能源消费对二氧化碳排放同时存在长期和短期的因果关系。ARDL估计结果表明,人均能源消费量对二氧化碳排放量解释力度最大,其次是人均国民总收入和对外贸易,并且推导出了一个持续增长的二氧化碳排放模型,同时给出一些政策建议。