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THE MEASUREMENT OF INCOME SEGREGATION
Author(s) -
Lasso de la Vega Casilda,
Volij Oscar
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.658
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1468-2354
pISSN - 0020-6598
DOI - 10.1111/iere.12466
Subject(s) - measure (data warehouse) , axiom , variable (mathematics) , economics , characterization (materials science) , econometrics , decomposition , mathematical economics , mathematics , computer science , data mining , mathematical analysis , ecology , materials science , geometry , biology , nanotechnology
We examine the problem of measuring the extent to which students with different income levels attend separate schools. Unless rich and poor attend the same schools in the same proportions, some segregation will exist. Since income is a continuous cardinal variable, however, the rich–poor dichotomy is necessarily arbitrary and renders any application of a binary segregation measure artificial. This article provides an axiomatic characterization of a measure of income segregation that takes into account the cardinal nature of income. This measure satisfies an empirically useful decomposition by subdistricts.