Poverty and inequality are often estimated from grouped data as complete household surveys are neither always available to researchers nor easy to analyze. In this study we assess the performance of functional forms proposed by Kakwani (1980a) and Villasenor and Arnold(1989) to estimate the...

This article conceives poverty in terms of the consumption of essential food, makes use of a new deprivation (or poverty) function, and examines the effects of changes in the mean and the variance of the income distribution on poverty, assuming a log-normal income distribution. The presence of a...

This paper explains how to build Lorenz Curves for income distributions and discusses their use for inequality measurement. A short conceptual background, a step-by-step procedure and a simple numerical example illustrate how to calculate and draw Lorenz Curves. A discussion on the use of Lorenz...

This paper illustrates how Crossing Generalised Lorenz (GL) curves can be used to identify the best income distribution on social welfare grounds within a set of alternative income distributions generated by different policy options. It starts by illustrating two alternative income distributions...

This article investigates the relationships among economic growth, income distribution and poverty in Brazil during the period from 2001 to 2005. Those relationships are analyzed starting from the selection of three models: one that relates the variations in the poverty indicators and the main...

This report surveys a dozen international comparative studies of poverty, income distribution and the elderly in OECD countries. It updates a previous Department of Social Security report — Whiteford and Kennedy, 1995, based on data from the mid- to late-1980s — including information up to...

Since the economic reforms of the early 1990s, the Indian economy witnessed a rapid rise in the mean income level, and, simultaneously, changes in the distribution of income. This study tries to capture how these changes affected poverty levels across major states in India. Total change in...

The aim of this paper is to estimate non-monetary income advantages arising from publicly provided education and to analyze their impact on the income distribution and on economic inequality in Germany. Using representative micro-data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and taking into...

This paper surveys a dozen international comparative studies of poverty, income distribution and older people in industrialized countries using data up to the mid-1990s. It addresses a series of questions. At what level are the incomes of the elderly relative to the population as a whole? How...

This module illustrates how Generalised Lorenz (GL) Curves can be used to identify the best income distribution on social welfare grounds, within a set of alternative income distributions generated by different policy options, in many of the cases where ordinary Lorenz curves fail to work After...