This paper proposes a measure for deprivation in social participation, an important but so far neglected dimension of human well-being. Operationalisation and empirical implementation of the measure are conceptually guided by the capability approach. Essentially, the paper argues that...

Estimates of the level of inequality of opportunity have traditionally been interpreted as lower bounds due to the downward bias resulting from the partial observability of circumstances that affect individual outcome. We show that such estimates may also suffer from upward bias as a consequence...

This paper presents a way to explore how macroeconomic shifts cause inequality changes. It is based on the backwardness observed in the agricultural sector in rural areas. It shows why highly dualistic economies tend to be more unequal than economies with flexible and integrated labour markets....

Income-related inequalities and horizontal inequity in health-care utilisation have recently been widely studied using linear additive models of decomposition. This paper applies new methods of decomposition by factors, based on microsimulation technique. Besides avoiding the unavoidable price...

Standard kernel density estimation methods are very often used in practice to estimate density function. It works well in numerous cases. However, it is known not to work so well with skewed, multimodal and heavy-tailed distributions. Such features are usual with income distributions, defined...

Grouped data have been widely used to analyze the global income distribution because individual records from nationally representative household surveys are often unavailable. In this paper we evaluate the performance of nonparametric density smoothing techniques, in particular kernel density...

Kernel density estimation (KDE) has been prominently used to measure poverty from grouped data (Sala-i-Martin, 2006, QJE). In this paper we analyze the performance of this method. Using Monte Carlo simulations for plausible income distributions and unit data from several household surveys, we...

When estimating regional inequality, many economists use inequality indices weighted by the regions' shares in the national population. Although this approach is widespread, its adequacy has not received attention in the regional science literature. This paper proves that such approach is...