<p>I have data about a few (subnational) geographical units. For each of these units, I know: </p>

<p>1) the proportion of workers by level of education </p>

<p>2) the average income by level of education</p>

<p>3) the average income for the all the population (across all levels of education)</p>

<p>I do not have access to micro-data, and I realise that this prevents me from taking within-group inequality into account. </p>

<p>That being said, what would be a way to calculate between-group (level of education) inequality, so I can compare its values across units?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-01T16:55:44.920Z
Do you know about the Gini Coefficient? http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GiniCoefficient.html
Ubiquitous
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-02T03:52:16.340Z
I think it is still unclear what you are aiming for. Could you specify (mathematically) the exact variable you are trying to estimate?
HRSE
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-02T10:15:49.253Z
@Ubiquitous I know about the Gini Coefficient, but my data do not allow me to calculate it, as I do not have information about individual level income, only group averages.
user47913
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-02T10:28:56.087Z
@HREcon I'm afraid that not being an economist and not having a good mathematical background, I am not able to specify the variable I am trying to estimate. Let me try to make it more clear: I realise that some inequality measures are decomposable into two components: between-group inequality and within-group inequality. Given that I only have group-level information, I would like to be able to extract a measure of between-group inequality which also takes into account the proportions of each group in the population.
user47913
<inequality>
Calculating between-group inequality without microdata
user47913
# Calculating between-group inequality without microdata

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-10-01)

I have data about a few (subnational) geographical units. For each of these units, I know:

1) the proportion of workers by level of education

2) the average income by level of education

3) the average income for the all the population (across all levels of education)

I do not have access to micro-data, and I realise that this prevents me from taking within-group inequality into account.

That being said, what would be a way to calculate between-group (level of education) inequality, so I can compare its values across units?

**Tags:** inequality

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Do you know about the Gini Coefficient? http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GiniCoefficient.html  
> **username_2**: I think it is still unclear what you are aiming for. Could you specify (mathematically) the exact variable you are trying to estimate?  
> **username_0**: @username_1 I know about the Gini Coefficient, but my data do not allow me to calculate it, as I do not have information about individual level income, only group averages.  
> **username_0**: @HREcon I'm afraid that not being an economist and not having a good mathematical background, I am not able to specify the variable I am trying to estimate. Let me try to make it more clear: I realise that some inequality measures are decomposable into two components: between-group inequality and within-group inequality. Given that I only have group-level information, I would like to be able to extract a measure of between-group inequality which also takes into account the proportions of each group in the population.  

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## 0 answers

