Decomposition of the Gini coefficient using Stata
The Gini coefficient is widely used to measure inequality in the distribution of income, consumption, and other welfare proxies. Decomposing this measure can help you understand the determinants of inequality. In this presentation, I will use income data from Mexico to illustrate a user-written command, descogini, that implements the Gini decomposition proposed by Lerman and Yitzhaki (1985, Review of Economics and Statistics 67: 151–156). Using this command, the Gini coefficient for total income can be decomposed in three terms: how important the income source is with respect to total income; how equally or unequally distributed the income source is; and how the income source and the distribution of total income are correlated. In the presentation, I will also illustrate how to obtain the impact that a marginal change in a particular income source will have on total income inequality, as well as how to obtain bootstrap standard errors.
Decomposing Inequality and Obtaining Marginal Effects
This article describes a user-written command, descogini, that decomposes the Gini coefficient by income source and allows the calculation of the impact that a marginal change in a particular income source will have on inequality. descogini can be used with bootstrap to obtain standard errors and confidence intervals.
Participation Improves Collective Decisions (When It Involves Deliberation): Experimental Evidence From Kenya
Abstract Citizen participation in decision making has been widely lauded as a method for improving societal outcomes. Deliberative discussion, in particular, is believed to be more transformative than a mere aggregation of individual preferences, leading to more socially optimal decision making and behavior. I report the results from a laboratory experiment with 570 subjects in Nairobi, directly testing the effect of participation in deliberative group decision making on collective outcomes. Participants engage in a group task to earn compensation toward a shared group fund. Randomly assigned treatments vary according to whether decision making over the task to be completed involves: (1) external assignment; (2) non-deliberative majority voting; or (3) consensus through deliberative discussion. I find that deliberation improves collective decision making. Deliberation is also associated with changes in preferences, greater agreement with decision outcomes, and greater perceived fairness. Evidence for behavior change is weaker, but there is some support for further research into the relationship between preference change and behavior change.