Imputed rents and regional income inequality in Turkey: A subgroup decomposition of the Atkinson index

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the regional differences in the effect of home ownership on income distribution in urban Turkey. The earlier finding that income distribution improves with the inclusion of imputed rents from owner-occupied housing has raised the question about whether this pattern is unique to a small number of densely populated areas where squatting is more widespread or whether it is more of a widely observed phenomenon. A decomposition analysis-based on the Atkinson index-that treats Turkey's geographical regions ( and, alternatively, provinces) as the subgroups that make up the whole population reveals that the main contributors to the overall improvement are the regions in which squatting is more prevalent.