Assessing Inequality Using Percentile Shares. (June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jann, Ben
• Is Part Of: Stata journal. Volume 16:Number 2(2016)
• Page Start: 264
• Page End: 300
• Publication Date: 2016-06
• Subjects: st0432 -- pshare -- percentile shares -- Lorenz curve -- concentration curve -- inequality -- income distribution -- wealth distribution -- graphics; Statistics -- Periodicals; Statistics -- Computer programs -- Periodicals; 001.422
• DOI: 10.1177/1536867X1601600202
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1536-867X

Abstract

At least since Thomas Piketty's best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press), percentile shares have become a popular approach for analyzing distributional inequalities. In their work on the development of top incomes, Piketty and collaborators typically report top-percentage shares, using varying percentages as thresholds (top 10%, top 1%, top 0.1%, etc.). However, analysis of percentile shares at other positions in the distribution may also be of interest. In this article, I present a new command, pshare, that estimates percentile shares from individual-level data and displays the results using histograms or stacked bar charts.