This new module introduced in UQICD 3.0 represents a major step forward in providing researchers and users with panels of real incomes as well as the distribution of incomes - two major components of economic welfare of a society. The real GDP series provides estimates of the size of the economies with real per capita GDP or income serving as in indicator of standard of living in these economies. It is well recognized (Sen, 1976; and Stiglitz-Sen- Fitoussi, 2009) that inequality in the distribution of income is a critical determinant of economic welfare.
Availability of income distribution data is largely determined by the frequency with which household income and expenditure surveys are conducted. These data play a major role in the estimation of incidence and severity of poverty at the national, regional and global level. Despite the importance attached to inequality data, availability is sparse. More importantly, detailed unit record data are usually not available for the users and often researchers rely on aggregated distribution data in the form of income shares for decile or ventile groups. While aggregated data are used in approximating inequality measures like the Gini coefficient and the Theil's measure, details of the underlying income distributions are seldom available for purposes of analysis. This UQICD module on inequality serves to fill this gap.
A series of research advances achieved over the last fifteen years have enabled the UQICD team to compile this panel of income distributions over the period 1970 to 2019. Data is available for 157 countries that are included in the computations for this module (see detailed information).
Charts depicting density functions, for each country, are available from this page providing users with a comparison of the fitted log-normal, pareto log-normal, GB2 and mixture log-normal for six selected years (1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2019).
The user is advised to consult the UQ International Comparisons Database: UQICD User Guide V3.0 for details of the income distributions included in the data base. Econometric methodology used in the estimation of income distributions is described in the User Guide, and further details can be found in various publications and working papers.
Inequality measures by region are also available.
Cite UQICD:
Rao, D.S. Prasada, A. N. Rambaldi, G. Hajargasht, D. Chotikapanich and W.E. Griffiths, UQ International Comparisons Database: UQICD V3.0, School of Economics, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia. 2022.