The Measurement of the Multidimensional Inequality Index in Urban and rural Areas of Iran during the period 1984-2018

The main purpose of this paper is to measure the multidimensional inequality index. To achieve this goal and answer of what trend inequality has gone through during the study period, using the data of the household expenditure income plan of the statistical center of Iran and also using the Bourguignon index, inequality was measured in several dimensions for the period 1984-2018. In addition, it should be noted that in this study, household expenditures were initially adjusted based on age composition and number of household members by calculating the equivalence scale. This adjustment was made possible by estimating the share of expenditures of different commodity groups by considering its functional form in the the quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS). Then, using data mining techniques and Principal Component Analysis(PCA), the weight of the studied dimensions in the analysis (income, education and health) was calculated and when measuring inequality, the degree of social aversion of inequality was considered in the form of two scenarios, zero and one. the results of this study indicate that the magnitude of multidimensional inequality per zero value for both the degree of social aversion of inequality parameter and the degree of substitution parameter based on the Bourguignon, index is between 0.28 and 0.41 in urban areas and between 0.26 and 0.41 in rural areas. fluctuations in the Bourguignon index and the Gini index of income have not necessarily been similar. The findings of this study also showed that the size of multidimensional inequality in rural areas is lower than urban areas in most of the years studied. There is an approximate similarity between its trend in urban and rural areas. Inequality in the 1980s was higher than in other periods (despite higher oil revenues than in the previous and subsequent periods and more government shares transferred than in previous periods), in the early 1390s, declined, and then increased again. Finally, the research findings indicate the failure of the egalitarian goals of development programs and thus emphasize the need for a fundamental review of the forthcoming programs with more attention to distribution by the market institution rather than the government.