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Income, Equality, and Economic Development
Author(s) -
Montenegro Alvaro
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
social science quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1540-6237
pISSN - 0038-4941
DOI - 10.1111/ssqu.12908
Subject(s) - human development index , ranking (information retrieval) , index (typography) , per capita income , per capita , economics , income distribution , gini coefficient , distribution (mathematics) , economic inequality , inequality , gross domestic product , econometrics , total personal income , human development (humanity) , demographic economics , economic growth , development economics , public economics , mathematics , gross income , population , demography , sociology , computer science , mathematical analysis , tax reform , machine learning , world wide web , state income tax
Objective This article proposes a simple and operational definition of development that combines the level of income per capita with a measure of income distribution. Method Following the definition, an economic development index is constructed by averaging income per capita with Gini coefficients from the well‐known SWIID database. Results A ranking of countries is obtained for the proposed index, and it is compared to the rankings produced using the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) and the GDP per capita. Conclusion The results for the proposed index show interesting differences with the rankings produced by the HDI and the economists’ favorite GDP per capita.