Calculate economic inequality in microdata.no: Gini coefficient

How big is the economic inequality in Norway? Has this changed in recent years? Are there geographical differences? Such things can now be analyzed by calculating Gini coefficient values ​​in microdata.no.

During the 2021 election campaign, there were many discussions about growing economic differences and the Gini coefficient. It is now possible to calculate Gini coefficients in microdata.no through the use of options for the commands summarizetabulatesummarize-panel and tabulate-panel.

Example of retrieving Gini value for the whole country in 2019:

summarize salary2019, gini

Example of retrieving Gini values ​​for the whole country in the period 2015-2019:

summarize salary2015 salary2016 salary2017 salary2018 salary2019, gini

Example of retrieving Gini values ​​by county in 2019:

tabulate county, summarize(salary2019) gini

By using the option gini, the statistics will contain an extra number that shows the gini value. The value scale goes from 0 to 1, where 0 means full economic equality, and 1 means the opposite (one person owns all wealth or all income). Normally, the value will be somewhere in between.

In addition to gini, the option iqr can be used to calculate interquartile range. This gives a measure of the center spread, i.e. the spread of the middle 50 percentiles. Mathematically, this equals the distance between the 75th and 25th percentiles. The option iqr is used in the same way as for gini, i.e. as an option for summarize,tabulatesummarize-panel and tabulate-panel.

The command help in combination with the relevant command can be used to find out more about these new options, e.g. help summarize or help tabulate.

We work continuously to improve microdata.no so that most analysis needs can be met. Thus, more and more analysis options will be introduced. We are based on input from researchers, and have compiled a list of new tools that we work through. Do you have specific suggestions for new functionality? Feel free to contact us by email: support@microdata.no