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Title: LOCAL INEQUALITY ANALYSIS IN THE US: EVIDENCE FROM SOME METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREAS
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: Understanding the impact of policy changes on the distribution of income first requires a good representation of the distribution. There are various ways to do this that range from simple approaches, as the calculus of inequality measures, to more sophisticated approaches, as the kernel estimation of the distribution and, if possible, the observation of its evolution over time. All these methods can be jointly employed to have a clearer view of the concentration of the income, to compare different distributions and to understand the impact of difference policy actions. In this work, we are interested in the analysis of income inequalities in the US between 2010 and 2018. In particular, we concentrate on a local perspective, by studying the inequality recorded in seven Metropolitan Statistical Areas, which have been chosen in order to cover geographically the US territory. It is important to emphasize that evaluating the degree of inequality at a local level, such a city or a metropolitan statistical area, is as important as at the national level. The connection, for instance, between inequality and crime is as strong within urban areas as it is across countries. Moreover, urban inequality seems as likely to generate political uprisings as inequality across large geographic units (Glaeser et al, 2009). The aim of this work is two-fold. On the one hand, we study inequality, measured via some of the most well-known inequality indices. On the other hand, we complete the analysis via the kernel estimate of the distribution and some distribution dynamics analysis. The idea is that to have a completely informative inequality analysis, different perspectives should be considered. The structure of the paper is as follows. In section 2, we present an overview of the main inequality measures. In section 3, we recall two tests to compare distributions. In section 4, we present our empirical analysis on 7 Metropolitan Statistical Areas across the USA. In section 5, we present some conclusions.
Url: http://www.sieds.it/listing/RePEc/journl/2021751P001_010_Gerolimetto.pdf
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Authors: Gerolimetto, Margherita; Magrini, Stefano
Periodical (Full): Rivista Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica
Issue: 1
Volume: 75
Pages: 2-10
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Poverty and Welfare
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