Using Relative Distribution Methods to Study Economic Polarization Across Categories and Contexts.

ABSTRACT: In addition to overall dispersion, the distributional shape of economic status has attracted growing attention in the inequality literature. Economic polarization is a specific form of distributional change, characterized by a shrinking middle of the distribution and a growing top and bottom, with potentially important and unique social consequences. Building on relative distribution methods and drawing from the literature on job polarization, we develop an approach for analyzing economic polarization at the individual level. Our method has three useful features. First, it offers intuitive and flexible measurement of economic polarization both between and within categories. Second, it helps disentangle two potential sources of economic polarization: compositional change

SUBMITTER: Cheng S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11781536 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature