Premium
Does the Centre Hold? Testing Palma's Proposition (A Comment)
Author(s) -
Hazledine Tim
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/dech.12105
Subject(s) - decile , proposition , inequality , economics , income distribution , economic inequality , population , distribution (mathematics) , demographic economics , income shares , developing country , development economics , economic growth , demography , sociology , statistics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , philosophy , epistemology
This Comment tests empirically the important proposition made by Palma in this journal ( Development and Change , 2011) that deciles 5 to 9 of the income distribution across developing economies have been able to secure and defend a stable share (around 50 per cent) of the total available income, so that changes in income inequality are now a matter of struggle between the top 10 per cent and the bottom 40 per cent of the population, ranked by income. The author finds that the proposition does not hold: changes in top 10 per cent shares are matched by changes in the shares of both the other cohorts.