Mogliia Zbigniew (p),Patricia Melo, José M. Gaspar

Diana Gutierrez-Posada

In this paper, we use the panel data component of the EU-SILC for the longest period of data available to date (2005-2016) to investigate geographical heterogeneity in individual labour income mobility and inequality across NUTSII regions and by degree of urbanisation (i.e. large urban areas, small urban areas, and rural areas) for Spain and France. Measuring income mobility over time is important as it can help to evaluate the extent to which there is upward/downward social mobility along the income distribution. Given the four-wave rotational design of EU-SILC, we can only study individuals’ income trajectories up to a maximum of four years (if individuals respond to the survey every year). We consider income mobility for 2-year (i.e. transitions between t-1 and t) and 4-year (i.e. transitions between t-3 and t) income trajectories. There appears to be greater variation in the level of income mobility across regions in France, than in Spain. However, discrepancies in upward mobility across regions appear to be high in both countries. There is some indication of a negative correlation between regions’ population size and the degree of upward mobility in all countries, which corroborates the results for income mobility by degree of urbanisation. To investigate the level of income inequality we compute different indicators, including the Gini Index (GI) and the income ratios P90/P10, P90/P50, and P50/P10. Overall, the results suggest that income inequality tends to be higher for larger urban areas and lower for rural areas, but there is variation across the income distribution as revealed by the different income ratios. Finally, we investigate the extent to which there is a relationship between income mobility and income inequality. Although the estimated coefficient of correlation suggests that higher income mobility is associated with lower income inequality, the correlation coefficient is not statistically significant.

Domenica Panzera (p), Paolo Postiglione, Alfredo Cartone

Diana Gutierrez-Posada

Spatial concentration of economic activities has been analysed in the literature using different indices and measures. However, the use of current methodologies cannot retrieve information about spatially clustered or evenly distributed across the area of interest. In this study, we try to tackle some of the drawbacks in the current methodology based on common inequality-based index as the locational Gini index. This brings up the importance of defining a measure which accounts for these differences, focusing on both concentration of activities and their location patterns. Our aim is to develop a methodology to consider information on the geographical distribution of the activities of interest, potentially due to extensive presence of patterns that may characterize the analysis of spatial data. Building on previous literature (Lerman and Yitzhaki, 1984; Schechtman and Yitzhaki, 1987) we propose a spatial decomposition of the Gini index defined as spatial locational Gini. To test our approach, the properties of this measure will be explored, and it will be illustrated trough an empirical analysis focused on different NACE sectors for Italian provinces.

References
Lerman, R. & Yitzhaki, S. (1984). A note on the calculation and interpretation of the Gini index. Economics Letters, 15, 363-368.
Schechtman, E. & Yitzhaki, S. (1987). A measure of association based on Gini’s mean difference. Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods, 16, 207-231.

Elise Stenholt Sørensen (p), Anders Kamp Høst

Diana Gutierrez-Posada

This paper addresses how the location of higher education institutions affects regional human capital inequality. More specifically we examine the following questions: Does distance to higher education institutions act as a deterrent to enrollment, and thereby cause regional inequality in educational outcomes? Are high school students from low socio-economic homes, more affected by longer distances? And is the relationship between distance and enrollment more pronounced in some geographical regions of Denmark? We employ Danish administrative data of high school students from 2006–2013 and find no significant relationship between distance and the decision to enroll in higher education, after controlling for individual and parental characteristics. The regional inequality in high school graduate’s educational choice, are mainly due to regional differences in the parent’s education level. When we consider, that parents with higher education typically locate in the bigger cities (with shorter distance to education), we find a very weak relationship between distance and education, for a sub-group of the population: The results suggest a small negative association between distance and enrollment among students in less-urban regions, in families where neither of their parents completed a higher education.

Diana Gutiérrez Posada (p), Fernando Rubiera Morollón, Maria Plonikova

Raquel Ortega-Argiles

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