Modeling the income distribution of the Philippines

Type Journal Article
Title Modeling the income distribution of the Philippines
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2009
URL http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=PH2011000134
Abstract
The income distribution of the Philippines was modeled using five distributions. These are Pareto Distribution, Lognormal Distribution, Gamma Distribution, Singh-Maddala model and the Dagum Model. An adjusted chi-square goodness-of-fit test was used, incorporating the sampling design used in the 2003 Family Income and Expenditure Survey data, to assess the fit of the five models. The parameters of the model were estimated using the non-linear least squares method of estimation. Furthermore, these parameters were used to estimate the national Gini coefficient of the Philippines, Gini coefficient for all the regions in the Philippines, as well as the Gini of the poor and the non-poor for both the national and regional levels. Total family income of the Philippines was divided into ten groups with the highest frequency on the second group with income ranges from 38,695 to 61,929 pesos composing of 17.81% of the total population and the lowest on the ninth group with income ranges from 254,262 to 354,749 pesos composing 6.65% of the population. Among the five fitted models, the Pareto, Gamma, and the Dagum models fit the income data of the Philippines but the Dagum model is the best fit to the 2003 FIES data with the smallest adjusted chi-square computed value. Using the parameters of the Dagum model, the Gini coefficient was computed and yielded a value of 0.6716.This value means that inequality in the income distributions of the Philippines still exists with the highest proportion of the population on the lowest income levels and the lowest proportion of the population on the highest income levels. Regional analysis was further done by estimating the parameters of the Dagum model to estimate the Gini coefficient. Region 4A [Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon, Philippines] get the highest estimated Gini coefficient with a value of 0.6771 and the lowest estimated Gini coefficient on Region 4B Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, Palawan, Philippines] with the value of 0.1909. Poverty threshold was obtained from the National Statistics Coordination Board to divide the population from poor to the non-poor. The estimated Gini coefficient of the poor at the national level is 0.1122 and at the regional level ranges from 0.0452 to 0.1491. These values only show that income distribution of the poor is almost equal. Moreover, the estimated Gini coefficient of the non-poor at the national level is 0.4755 and from 0.3572 to 0.5282 at the regional level. Two regions on the non-poor sector namely; Region 9 Western Visayas, Philippines] and Region 12 [Central Visayas, Philippines] have an estimate Gini coefficients of more than 0.5. It was also examined that the estimated Gini coefficient of the poor was much smaller than that of non-poor which only means that the poor was less different with respect to income levels to that of the non-poor.

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