etheil {educineq}

Theil index of education

Description

etheil is a function to compute the Theil index of education for any group of countries included in the dataset developed in Jorda and Alonso (2017). The function also provides a decomposition of this index in between-county and within-country inequality.

Usage

etheil(countries, init.y, final.y, database, plot = TRUE)

Arguments

countries

character vector with the country codes of the countries to be used. Some macro-regions are already defined and can be used instead of the country codes: South Asia, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Advanced Economies, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific and all for the 142 counrties included in the dataset.(see data_country).

init.y

the first year in which the function is calculated. Available years are 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010.

final.y

the last year in which the function is calculated Available years are 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010.

database

population subgrup for which the function is calculated. The following options are available:

1. "total15": Total population aged over-15.

2. "total25": Total population aged over-25.

3. "male15": Male population aged over-15.

4. "male25": Male population aged over-25.

5. "female15": Female population aged over-15.

6. "female25": Female population aged over-25.

plot

if TRUE (the default), displays a graph of the results.

Details

The estimates of the Theil index for the specified group of countries can be easily derived by taking advantage of the decomposition of this family. It is computed as the sum of the following terms, which correspond to within- country and between, country inequality respectively (see, e.g., Cowell, 2011):

T_W=\sum_{i=1}^{N} s_i T_i;

T_B=\sum_{i=1}^{N} s_i log(\mu_i / \mu),

where N is the number of countries, T_i denotes the Theil index of the country i and s_i stands for the proportion of mean income of the country i in the overall mean of the group: s_i=\lambda_i \mu_i / \sum_{i=1}^{N} \lambda_i \mu_i.

Value

etheil returns a list with the following objects:

1. Theli_index: evolution of the Theil index of education from the initial to the last year, decomposed in between-country and within-country inequality.

2. countries: countries used to compute the Theil index.

3. If plot = TRUE, graphical representation of the numerical results.

References

Cowell, F. (2011). Measuring inequality. Oxford University Press.

Jorda, V. and Alonso, J.M. (2017). New estimates on educational attainment using a continuous approach (1970-2010), World Development, 90, 281 - 293. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16305010

See Also

data_country. Visit http://www.educationdata.unican.es for more information on the constructoin of the dataset and the available countries.

Examples

etheil(countries = "Advanced Economies", init.y = 1980, final.y = 2000,
       database = "male25")
etheil(countries = c("DNK", "FIN", "ISL", "NOR", "SWE"), init.y = 1980,
       final.y = 2000, database = "female15")