Inequalities Between Groups: Theory and Empirics

Abstract

Inequality between identity groups has long been thought of as an important contributor to social unrest and violence as well as being important in assessing the justice of societies. Yet, the measurement of the ways in which such groups differ and are unequal remains underdeveloped. Accordingly, this paper introduces three distinct but interlinked concepts relating to inequality between groups which can be used in empirical estimation of group based inequality. We define and discuss the concepts of Representational Inequality, Sequence Inequality and Group Inequality Comparison. Representational Inequality captures the extent to which a given level of attribute is shared between members of distinct groups, Sequence Inequality captures the extent to which groups are ordered hierarchically in their possession of the attribute and Group Inequality Comparison captures the extent to which differences between groups account for the overall inequality of individuals. These concepts can be used to measure the degree of segregation, clustering and polarization between groups. In order to illustrate the merit of these concepts and their joint application to understanding group based inequality we provide an example using DHS data for five societies. It may be seen that the choice of measures is greatly consequential in applied work.