Skip to main content
Similar results

Globalisation, Technology and Wage Inequality, 1870-1970

Inequality in the American City : Census Data for Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 1960-1970

Inequality measures based on election data 1871 and 1892 for Swedish municipalities

Income and inequality in Sweden 1951-2002

Globalization, Inequality and Institutions in West Sumatra and West Java, c. 1800-1940

Access studyView JSONBack
Summary information

Study title

Global income inequality measures and bibliography of household surveys, 1880-1960

Creator

Gazeley, I, Sussex University
Newell, A, Sussex University
Reynolds, K, Brighton University

Study number / PID

853185 (UKDA)

10.5255/UKDA-SN-853185 (DOI)

Data access

Open

Series

Not available

Abstract

Dataset consisting of inequality measures for 46 nation states and a global bibliography of all known household expenditure surveys covering the period roughly 1880-1960. Each entry notes when and where the survey was carried out and salient characteristics of the survey such as number of households, whether income and/or expenditure data are collected etc. These bibliographies are organised by six world regions and then by 118 nation states. For a sub-set of the most useful surveys we have estimated various inequality measures from the published data for 46 nation states, organised by world region.

This project will calculate new estimates of world inequality in the period from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1960s, based on the results of household expenditure surveys. Our investigations have located a vast cache of household expenditure surveys for the period. Thus far, we have identified around 800 household surveys from around the world, carried out between the 1880s and 1960s, of which around half are of sufficient scope as to be potentially useful for the investigation of inequality. We will extract the reported demographic and expenditure data by income group from these reports and use them to estimate parameters of the income distribution. Using these estimates, we will investigate the changing nature of inequality within a number of key nation states, and also investigate the time path and geography of global inequality 1880-1960. In addition, we would use these data to estimate other indicators of living conditions, such as nutritional attainment, which may provide further insights into the impact of industrialisation on inequality.

Topics

HistoryEconomics

Keywords

HOUSEHOLD BUDGETSSOCIAL INEQUALITY2018

Methodology

Data collection period

15/01/2014 - 14/01/2018

Country

World Wide

Time dimension

Not available

Analysis unit

Household
Geographic Unit

Universe

Not available

Sampling procedure

Not available

Kind of data

Numeric
Text

Data collection mode

This project utilised the published reports of household expenditure surveys. These published reports are held at copyright libraries or national statistical offices and were typically part of the output of government departments (for example, the UK Board of Trade). We compiled our bibliographies through library searches and requests to various national statistical offices. Many of these reports are published in English, but a substantial number are only published in the language of the relevant nation state. The published household expenditure survey reports typically include summary tables of grouped data of income, expenditures, and household structure. All of these reports, and the data therein, are already in the public domain, and our bibliography provides details of when and where they were published. From these data we estimated a suite of inequality measures, using three different techniques. The inequality measures are: Gini coefficient, 90/10 percentile ratio, 90/50 percentile ratio, and the 50/10 percentile ratio. These inequality measures were estimated three ways: linear interpolation, the Beta-Lorenz method and a log normal density estimation. Not all published household expenditure survey reports contain sufficient data to estimate inequality measures. Our selection was based simply on whether the reports published the appropriate data. All that we required to estimate inequality were total household income or expenditure grouped by class (and the group average incomes/expenditures) and the total number of households and average household size.

Funding information

Grant number

ES/L002523/1

Access

Publisher

UK Data Service

Publication year

2018

Terms of data access

The Data Collection is available to any user without the requirement for registration for download/access.

Related publications

Not available