Sample sizes for reliably estimating lower and upper income shares in income distribution analysis

Arbeitspapier

This paper uses distribution-free formulas for the asymptotic variances of sample quantile income shares - as typically published by statistical agencies as measures of the distribution of income inequality - to calculate how large a survey sample must be in order to estimate a more refined quantile breakdown for a given level of confidence. The approach is applied to decile and quintile earnings data to calculate required increases in sample size to obtain tail 5 percent quantal share estimates and to test changes in income shares. Simple rules of thumb are offered for such a required increase.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Queen’s Economics Department Working Paper ; No. 1505

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Hypothesis Testing: General ; Specific Distributions; Specific Statistics ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
• Subject: Income share standard errors ; sample size ; statistical inference

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Beach, Charles M.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Queen's University, Department of Economics
• (where): Kingston (Ontario)
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/281109
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET