Averaging income distributions

Abstract

Various inequality and social welfare measures often depend heavily on the choice of a distribution of income. Picking a distribution that best fits the data involves throwing away information and does not allow for the fact that a wrong choice can be made. Instead, Bayesian model averaging utilizes a weighted average of the results from a number of income distributions, with each weight given by the probability that a distribution is correct. In this study, prior densities are placed on mean income, the mode of income and the Gini coefficient for Australian income units with one parent (1997-8). Then, using grouped sample data on incomes, posterior densities for the mean and mode of income ..