Palma resources

Here you can find links to papers on the Palma, and datasets – a work in progress, so please send any I miss.

Latest

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, 2019, ‘Keeping Out Extreme Inequality from the SDG Agenda – The Politics of Indicators‘, Global Policy 10(S1), 61-69; doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12602.

Jose Gabriel Palma, 2019, ‘Behind the Seven Veils of Inequality. What if it’s all about the Struggle within just One Half of the Population over just One Half of the National Income?‘, Development & Change Distinguished Lecture 2018: 0(0): 1–81; doi:10.1111/dech.12505.

Alex Cobham, Luke Schlogl and Andy Sumner, 2016, ‘Inequality and the Tails: The Palma Proposition and Ratio‘,  Global Policy 7: 25–36; doi:10.1111/1758-5899.12320.

Dataset:
1. Download international Palma Gini data in xls
2. Download UK household Palma Gini data in xls

Data from international organisations

OECD Income Distribution Database (IDD)

  • Palma ratios from 2004 for OECD member states plus Brazil, China, Costa Rica, India, Russia and South Africa

UNDP Human Development Report database (HDR)

  • Data for most countries, single observation only (dated 2010-2017). Ratios are HDRO calculations based on data from World Bank.

World Bank Global Monitoring Report

Select Palma bibliography

Alex Cobham, Luke Schlogl and Andy Sumner, 2015, ‘Inequality and the Tails: The Palma Proposition and Ratio Revisited‘,  UNDESA Working Paper 143, New York: UN Department of Economic & Social Affairs.

Alex Cobham and Andy Sumner, 2013a, ‘Putting the Gini Back in the Bottle? “The Palma” as a Policy-Relevant Measure of Inequality’, Mimeograph, London: King’s College London.

Alex Cobham and Andy Sumner, 2013b, ‘Is It All About the Tails? The Palma Measure of Income Inequality‘, CGD Working Paper, Washington DC: Center for Global Development.

Alex Cobham, Luke Schlogl and Andy Sumner, 2015, ‘Inequality and the Tails: The Palma Proposition and Ratio Revisited‘,  UNDESA Working Paper 143, New York: UN Department of Economic & Social Affairs.

Michael Doyle, and Joseph Stiglitz, 2014, ‘Eliminating Extreme Inequality: A Sustainable Development Goal, 2015–2030’, Ethics and International Affairs 28(10), 1–7.

Tim Hazledine, 2014, ‘Does the Centre Hold? Testing Palma’s Proposition (A Comment)’, Development and Change 45(6), 1409–15.

Jose Gabriel Palma, 2006, ‘Globalizing inequality: ‘Centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ forces at workDESA Working Paper 35, New York: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Jose Gabriel Palma, 2011, ‘Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘Inverted-U’: The share of the rich is what it’s all about’, Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1111, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Department of Economics (later published in Development and Change 42(1), 87-153).

Jose Gabriel Palma, 2013, ‘Has the Income Share of the Middle and Upper-Middle been Stable Over Time, or is its Current Homogeneity Across the World the Outcome of a Process of Convergence? The ‘Palma Ratio’ Revisited‘, Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1437, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Department of Economics (later published as 2014a, ‘Has the Income Share of the Middle and Upper-Middle Been Stable Around the “50/50 Rule”, or has it Converged Towards That Level? The “Palma Ratio” Revisited’ in Development and Change 45(6), 1416–48).

Jose Gabriel Palma, 2014b, ‘Why is Inequality so Unequal across the World? Could it be that Every Nation Gets the Inequality it Deserves?’, in J. Stiglitz and K. Basu (eds), Proceedings of IEA Roundtable on Shared Prosperity and Growth.

Max Schröder, 2015, ‘Mythical Measures: The Problem of Objective Inequality Measurement in Economics and the Social Sciences’, Groundings 8: 129–44.

Faiza Shaheen, 2014, Reducing economic inequality as a Sustainable Development Goal: Measuring up the options for beyond 2015, London: New Economics Foundation.

Select papers using the Palma

Pending. In the meantime, here are the most recent search results from: