Kuznets's hypothesis and the data constraint

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2009

Authors

Argentino Pessoa (Author) FEP

Journal

Title: Applied Economics Letters

Vol. 16 No. 8

Pages: 813-818

ISSN: 1350-4851

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 0 Citations

Scopus - 2 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-003-P4Z

DOI: 10.1080/13504850701221881

Abstract (EN): Five decades ago, Simon Kuznets expressed an important hypothesis about the relationship between the degree of income inequality within a country and its level of economic development: the Kuznets's inverted-U hypothesis. The lack of longitudinal data has forced the use of cross-section or pooled datasets in order to draw conclusions about that relationship. In the present note we highlight the lack of international comparability of surveys where the measures of inequality are based, and we show two main findings: (1) data comparability goes on constituting a problem, particularly in what respects to the different welfare indicators used in national surveys, and (2) the procedure usually used to minimize the problem of noncomparability is likely to enforce the bias rather than to solve it.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 6