# polar.aff: Wolfson polarization index In affluenceIndex: Affluence (Richness) Indices

## Description

Computes the Wolfson polarization index.

## Usage

 1 polar.aff(x, weight) 

## Arguments

 x the income vector weight vector of weights

## 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 (Wolfson 1994). Weighted version of this index is given by:

P_w= 2 ≤ft( 2T-G_w \right) \frac{μ_w}{ρ_w},

where T is the difference between 0.5 and the income share of bottom half of the population, G_w is the Gini coefficient, μ_w is the mean income, ρ_w is the median income.

## Value

 Pw the value of index TT the difference between 0.5 and the income share of bottom half of the population

## Author(s)

Alicja Wolny-Dominiak, Anna Saczewska-Piotrowska

## References

1. Alichi A., Kantenga K., Sole 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

 1 2 data(affluence) polar.aff(affluence\$income, weight = NULL) 

affluenceIndex documentation built on Jan. 5, 2022, 5:07 p.m.