No country for poor old men: A decomposition analysis of old age inequality in Korea

Abstract

In this paper we introduce conditional Gini coefficient that measures the intra-age income inequality, to analyze the rise in inequality among the elderly in Korea from 2000 to 2012. We test whether the age-conditional inequality increased, and extend the decomposition method to account for the changes in conditional distributions and conditional Gini coefficients. Using the Korea Family Budget Survey, we find that the reduction in family size contributed to the rise in the old age inequality, which is partly canceled out by the effects from the public redistributive devices that became more progressive during the period.