MEASURE DHS - Journal Details

Measuring Inequality of Opportunity with Imperfect Data: The Case of Turkey
Authors:	Ferreira, Francisco H. G.; Gignoux, Jeremie; Aran, Meltem
Source:	Journal of Economic Inequality, December 2011, v. 9, iss. 4, pp. 651-80, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10888-011-9169-0
Topic(s):	Health Inequality Wealth Index
Country:	Asia Turkey
Published:	DEC 2011
Abstract:	Abstract: The measurement of inequality of opportunity has hitherto not been attempted in a number of countries because of data limitations. This paper proposes two alternative approaches to circumventing the missing data problems in countries where a demographic and health survey (DHS) and an ancillary household expenditure survey are available. One method relies only on the DHS, and constructs a wealth index as a measure of economic advantage. The alternative method imputes consumption from the ancillary survey into the DHS. In both cases, we compute a lower bound estimator of the share of (ex-ante) inequality of opportunity in total inequality. Parametric and non-parametric estimates are calculated for each method, and the parametric approach is shown to yield preferable lower-bound measures. In an application to the sample of ever-married women aged 30-49 in Turkey, inequality of opportunity accounts for at least 26% (31%) of overall inequality in imputed consumption (the wealth index).