Primary income receipts and income inequality in emerging countries

Abstract

The rise in income inequality is often ascribed to globalisation and its various components, such as economic migrations and foreign direct investment. Previous research in this area focused on the relationship between income inequality and flows or stocks of migrants and capital. Little attention has been paid to income flows generated by these categories that are recorded in the balance of payments as primary income. Existing analysis explored the impact of migrants’ remittances on the distribution of income in developing countries. This article analyses the relationship between primary income receipts and income inequality using panel cointegration methods for a group of six emerging countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Russia, Turkey and Chile. In contrast to the existing literature, income inequality is measured by top percentile income share derived from fiscal data (World Inequalities Database). The results reveal a long run, positive relationship between primary income receipts as a share of GDP and top percentile income share. There is also a long-run causal relationship between a rise (fall) in primary income receipts and a rise (fall) in income inequality. The results are robust to alternative estimation methods (CCE, DOLS, VECM). The scope of this work is narrowed by the limited availability of comparable data for other emerging countries.