Abstract:
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Recently, White (2007) analysed the international inequalities in Ecological
Footprints per capita (EF hereafter) based on a two-factor decomposition of an
index from the Atkinson family (Atkinson (1970)). Specifically, this paper
evaluated the separate role of environment intensity (EF/GDP) and average
income as explanatory factors for these global inequalities. However, in addition
to other comments on their appeal, this decomposition suffers from the serious
limitation of the omission of the role exerted by probable factorial correlation
(York et al. (2005)). This paper proposes, by way of an alternative, a
decomposition of a conceptually similar index like Theil’s (Theil, 1967) which, in
effect, permits clear decomposition in terms of the role of both factors plus an
inter-factor correlation, in line with Duro and Padilla (2006). This decomposition
might, in turn, be extended to group inequality components (Shorrocks, 1980),
an analysis that cannot be conducted in the case of the Atkinson indices. The
proposed methodology is implemented empirically with the aim of analysing the
international inequalities in EF per capita for the 1980-2007 period and,
amongst other results, we find that, indeed, the interactive component explains,
to a significant extent, the apparent pattern of stability observed in overall
international inequalities.
Key words: ecological footprint; international environmental distribution;
inequality decomposition |