Inequality in Egypt: Age-adjusted Gini coefficient

Yıl 2019, Cilt: 5 Sayı: 4, 434 - 446, 01.10.2019

Maha Elhini

https://doi.org/10.24289/ijsser.639699

Cited By: 1

Öz

Egypt’s current ‘youth bulge’ constitutes the majority
of its population, which implies that growth in the working-age population is
faster than the overall population growth rate. With a fast-growing young
population in Egypt, it is important to understand whether this demographic
composition has an impact on the current inequality measures, since an
individual’s stage in life deems detrimental for understanding his or her
wealth holdings. In this light, this paper departs from the basic life-cycle
impact on wealth inequality measures, and alternatively proposes an empirical
method to adjust for age-effects in cross-sectional inequality for Egypt. The
resulting Age-adjusted Gini coefficient (AG), eliminates wealth inequality that is attributed
to age, yet it perpetuates inequality arising from other wealth-generating
factors. By using wealth equalising measures, results of the Age-adjusted Gini
coefficient show that age and household characteristics have no impact on
wealth accumulation in Egypt, however, wealth is greatly influenced by
increasing levels of education, making way for possible movement up the
mobility scale. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

Gini coefficient, age, wealth, Education, Egypt

Kaynakça

• Almås, I., Mogstad, M. (2012): Older or wealthier? The impact of age-adjustments on the wealth inequality ranking of countries. Scand. J. of Economics 114(1), 24–54.
• Almås, I., Cappelen, A., Thori Lind, J., Sørensen, E., Tungodden, B. (2011): Measuring unfair (in)equality. J. Public Econ.
• Assaad, Ragui, and Caroline Krafft. (2013). The Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey: Introducing the 2012 Round. Giza, Egypt: The Economic Research Forum.