etheil: Theil index of education

In educineq: Compute and Decompose Inequality in Education

Description

etheil is a function to compute the Theil index of education for any group of countries included in the dataset developed in Jorda and Alonso (2017). The function also provides a decomposition of this index in between-county and within-country inequality.

Usage

etheil(countries, init.y, final.y, database, plot = TRUE)

Arguments

countries	character vector with the country codes of the countries to be used. Some macro-regions are already defined and can be used instead of the country codes: South Asia, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Advanced Economies, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific and all for the 142 counrties included in the dataset.(see data_country).
init.y	the first year in which the function is calculated. Available years are 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010.
final.y	the last year in which the function is calculated Available years are 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010.
database	population subgrup for which the function is calculated. The following options are available: "total15": Total population aged over-15. "total25": Total population aged over-25. "male15": Male population aged over-15. "male25": Male population aged over-25. "female15": Female population aged over-15. "female25": Female population aged over-25.
plot	if TRUE (the default), displays a graph of the results.

Details

The estimates of the Theil index for the specified group of countries can be easily derived by taking advantage of the decomposition of this family. It is computed as the sum of the following terms, which correspond to within- country and between, country inequality respectively (see, e.g., Cowell, 2011):

T_W=∑_{i=1}^{N} s_i T_i;

T_B=∑_{i=1}^{N} s_i log(μ_i / μ),

where N is the number of countries, T_i denotes the Theil index of the country i and s_i stands for the proportion of mean income of the country i in the overall mean of the group: s_i=λ_i μ_i / ∑_{i=1}^{N} λ_i μ_i.

Value

etheil returns a list with the following objects:

1. Theli_index: evolution of the Theil index of education from the initial to the last year, decomposed in between-country and within-country inequality.

2. countries: countries used to compute the Theil index.

3. If plot = TRUE, graphical representation of the numerical results.

References

Cowell, F. (2011). Measuring inequality. Oxford University Press.

Jorda, V. and Alonso, J.M. (2017). New estimates on educational attainment using a continuous approach (1970-2010), World Development, 90, 281 - 293. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16305010

See Also

data_country. Visit http://www.educationdata.unican.es for more information on the constructoin of the dataset and the available countries.

Examples

etheil(countries = "Advanced Economies", init.y = 1980, final.y = 2000,
       database = "male25")
etheil(countries = c("DNK", "FIN", "ISL", "NOR", "SWE"), init.y = 1980,
       final.y = 2000, database = "female15")

Example output

$Theil_index
                  1980       1985       1990       1995       2000
Between     0.08250998 0.05448431 0.04027279 0.03163963 0.02566217
Within      0.20990647 0.24249585 0.22954167 0.19022628 0.15841474
Theil index 0.29241645 0.29698016 0.26981446 0.22186591 0.18407690

$countries
 [1] Australia      Austria        Belgium        Canada         Switzerland   
 [6] Germany        Denmark        Spain          Finland        France        
[11] United Kingdom Greece         Ireland        Iceland        Italy         
[16] Japan          Luxembourg     Netherlands    Norway         New Zealand   
[21] Portugal       Sweden         Turkey         United States 
142 Levels: Afghanistan Albania Algeria Argentina Armenia Australia ... Zimbabwe

$Theil_index
                   1980        1985        1990        1995        2000
Between     0.004481889 0.004224427 0.005512485 0.001902679 0.002019952
Within      0.175915842 0.162721347 0.139605348 0.127168891 0.119736568
Theil index 0.180397730 0.166945774 0.145117833 0.129071571 0.121756520

$countries
[1] Denmark Finland Iceland Norway  Sweden 
142 Levels: Afghanistan Albania Algeria Argentina Armenia Australia ... Zimbabwe

educineq documentation built on May 2, 2019, 12:40 p.m.