polar.aff: Polarization index

In affluenceIndex: Affluence Indices

Description

Computes the Wolfson polarization index.

Usage

polar.aff(x)

Arguments

x	the income vector

Details

Standard inequality measures do not give any information about polarization. A more polarized income distribution is one that has relatively fewer middle income class and more low- and/or high-income households (Alichi et al. 2016). Low income class is very often identified with poverty and high-income class with richness. One of the measures of polarization is the Wolfson polarization index given by (Wolfson 1994)

P= ≤ft(T-\frac{G}{2} \right) \frac{μ}{Me},

where T is the difference between 0.5 and the income share of bottom half of the population, G is the Gini coefficient, μ is the mean income, Me is the median income.
In order to have index from \langle 0,1 \rangle interval, Wolfson defined the scalar polarization index:

P^* = 2 ≤ft( 2T-G \right) \frac{μ}{Me}.

Value

gini	the Gini coefficient
p	the Wolfson polarization index
p.scalar	the Wolfson scalar polarization index
T	the difference between 0.5 and the income share of bottom half of the population

Author(s)

Alicja Wolny-Dominiak, Anna S<b1>czewska-Piotrowska

References

1. Alichi A., Kantenga K., Sol<e9> J. (2016) Income polarization in the United States. IMF Working Paper, WP/16/121.
2. Wolfson M.C. (1994) When inequalities diverge, The American Economic Review, 84, pp. 353-358.

Examples

data(affluence)
polar.aff(affluence$income)

Example output

$gini
[1] 0.3064632

$p
[1] 0.0607037

$p.scalar
[1] 0.2428148

$T
[1] 0.2045863

affluenceIndex documentation built on May 2, 2019, 8:20 a.m.