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INCOME INEQUALITY IN URBAN COLOMBIA: A DECOMPOSITION ANALYSIS
Author(s) -
Fields Gary S.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4991.1979.tb00102.x
Subject(s) - inequality , poverty , economics , economic inequality , section (typography) , robustness (evolution) , development economics , developing country , decomposition , econometrics , economic growth , mathematics , computer science , mathematical analysis , biochemistry , chemistry , gene , ecology , biology , operating system
The persistence of poverty and income inequality in less developed countries (LDCs) is a source of serious concern to development economists. To understand the structure of inequality, several researchers using a variety of methodologies have measured the importance of various contributory factors to overall income variability. The available literature—which now includes studies of Brazil, Mexico, Iran, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan, and Colombia‐has been reviewed elsewhere (Fields, forthcoming). This paper presents additional evidence for urban Colombia, in the process raising some important methodological issues which bear on the design of future research studies. The data set used in this paper is described in Section I. The decomposition of Colombian inequality by functional income source is presented in Section 11 for micro data. Section I11 examines the robustness of source decomposition procedures to data aggregation. Section IV presents inequality decompositions by city, and Section V by other income‐determining characteristics. Conclusions appear in Section VI.