Abstract
This paper examines the evolution of income affluence (richness) in Poland during 1998–2007. Using household survey data, the paper estimates several statistical indices of income affluence including income share of the top percentiles, population share of individuals receiving incomes higher than the richness line, and measures that take into account both the extent and the intensity of affluence. Results show that over the period under study there was a statistically significant and socio-economically sizable rise in income affluence by between 9 and 50%, depending on the index used. The overall income distribution in the period has shifted in favour of the rich as relative poverty and relative size and income share of the middle class have declined.
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Notes
Long run high-quality estimates of the income shares of the top p% of the population have been produced for at least fourteen developed countries and at least four developing economies (Atkinson and Piketty 2007; Leigh 2009). An almost exhaustive reference list of recent papers devoted to the empirical measurement of top incomes can be found in Leigh (2009). These papers usually rely on incomes reported for tax purposes, but the number of studies based on household survey data grows as well.
In this paper terms richness and affluence are used interchangeably. They are used in a neutral sense to denote ‘top incomes’ in the population.
The group included also Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
This is the longest period for which the consistent data series can be constructed.
An early contribution to the first strand of this literature was offered by Drewnowski (1978).
This reasoning assumes, of course, that these transfers would be efficient (i.e., there would be no leakage in the transfer or the process would not impede economic growth).
This measure bears resemblance to the well-known poverty headcount ratio, which is defined s a proportion of the population with incomes below the poverty line.
Peichl et al. (2008) present five arguments in favour of the axiom T1, but such arguments are much less persuasive in the debate on measuring richness than analogous ones put forward in the poverty measurement debate.
However, incomes reported for tax purposes may also fail to reflect real incomes accurately because of tax evasion or tax avoidance.
Kordos et al. (2002) provide detailed description of HBS.
As shown by Howes and Lanjouw (1998), ignoring the sample design leads to calculated standard errors of poverty indices, which can be smaller by as much as a third than the correctly calculated standard errors.
A detailed exposition of the bootstrap approach is given by Efron and Tibshirani (1993).
Poland joined the European Union on 1 May 2004.
Affluence indices were calculated using a modified version of user-written STATA module richness (Peichl and Schaefer 2006).
These definitions of the size of the ‘middle class’ were used, among others, by Wolfson (1994).
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Brzezinski, M. Income Affluence in Poland. Soc Indic Res 99, 285–299 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9580-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9580-0