Decomposition of Mehran and Piesch inequality measures by factor components and their application to the distribution of per capita household income in Brazil

Abstract

Inequality decomposition by factor components is extended to the Mehran and Piesch indices, comparing them with the decomposition of the Gini index, the squared coefficient of variation and the Theil's T coefficient. The decomposition procedure is applied to the distribution of per capita household income in Brazil in 1999, considering six components: earnings of civil servants and military personnel, earnings of other employees, earnings of self-employed workers, earnings of employers, pensions and, finally, all other incomes. One of the results is that for all the five measures used, the concentration ratio of pensions is higher than the overall index of inequality, indicating that this component is contributing to the increase in income inequality.