Quantitative Methods in Economic Inequality: Analysis of Inequality in Puebla

Economic inequality is a social phenomenon with several facets, all of which are signifificant when it comes to multidimensional measurement. When income is used as the fundamental variable of analysis to measure economic inequality, it is usual for income distribution to have a positive skew, which implies a high concentration of income in a small percentage of the population. To express the degree of inequality in the world, Oxfam (2020) has determined that “The 2,153 billionaires in the world own more wealth than 4,600 million people (60% of the world’s population)”, an alarming measure in which no government has concern. At the scientifific level, the scope of studies on economic inequality range from explaining the causes and effects, to measuring the magnitude of inequality, and with the objective to promote proposals and actions aimed at fifinding a solution. In this sense this book arises as a response to reduce the enormous differences in income that exist between individuals. Thus, this book is an effort with three quantitative approaches (2015). The fifirst is inequality seen as multidimensional poverty, which relies on a Principal Component Analysis. The second one is a model based on the Gini coeffificient and estimated from Nonlinear Ordinary Least Squares (nlols) and the last approach based on a Quantile Regression. All whose technical results offer an image of the State of Puebla that aims to favor long-term public policies to reduce economic inequality, which depends on the efforts of different actors in different scenarios: public, private, academic and governmental.