I discuss the applicability of the recentered influence function (RIF) to the analysis of poverty differentials between distributions (regression-based decomposition into composition and income structure effects). I show that the predominant approach in the empirical literature estimates the...

This paper presents preliminary evidence of the annual global income distribution since 1950 using a new integrated dataset that aggregates standardized country income distributions at the percentile level estimated from various sources in the World Income Inequality Database. I analyse the...

In this paper, we use the World Income Inequality Database to assess the main trends in inequality within countries since around 1990. We cope with the heterogeneity in the original information (regarding the measure of resources, equivalence scale, etc.) by focusing on the trends rather than on...

This paper investigates progress in reducing the high level of racial stratification of occupations after apartheid in South Africa. Empirical analysis, using census microdata and Labour Force Surveys, does not provide strong evidence of sustained or significant desegregation. Occupations remain...

I discuss a new approach which decomposes inequality into the contributions of population groups by income sources. I estimate a matrix with rows and columns which indicate different population groups and income sources respectively, with each element indicating the marginal change in the...

In this paper, I quantify the contribution of a subpopulation to inequality. This is defined as the sum of the contributions of its members, with these contributions computed as the impact on inequality of a small increase in the population mass at each point of the distribution (using the...

This paper investigates inequalities across the major black ethnic groups in South Africa, accounting for 80 per cent of the country's population. We demonstrate that there is an important ethnic gap in the poverty levels of the Xhosa and the Zulu with respect to the Sotho/Tswana. We also show...

We revisit trends in within-country income inequality using a newly integrated dataset that covers at least 70 per cent of the global population since 1980. We investigate absolute and relative inequality trends across the past four decades, combining the use of Lorenz curves with a set of...

In this paper, we analyse the role of the changing nature of occupational employment and wages in explaining the trend in earnings inequality in Ghana between 2006 and 2017, a period in which there was a substantial transformation of the economy, with workers moving out of agriculture and...

We analyse income and expenditure distribution in China in a comparative perspective with India. These countries represent extreme cases in the relationship of inequality to both wellbeing indicators. Income is more highly concentrated than expenditure in India, especially at the top of the...