SECTORIAL REGIONAL INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN HONDURAS FOR THE PERIOD OF 2001-2018

Abstract

This paper analyses the sectorial income distribution among rural and urban regions of Honduras in an ex-post way throughout the years of 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016 y 2018. In this sense, we employ microdata from Encuesta Permanente de Hogares para Propósitos Múltiples (EPHPM), with which we proceed to segment the income by economic activity branch according to the urban or rural zone. Based on the previous data, we estimate three statistical measures that allow us to describe the evolution of the Honduran sectorial income distribution between regions; these three measures are the Gini coefficient, the Theil index and Kernel densities. The results show inconclusive evidence warning about important heterogeneities in Honduras income distribution, be it at the regional or sectorial level. Moreover, the rural zone has experimented greater gaps in income distribution, especially for the primary branch. In general, the increments of household’s total income have not been enough to prevent that most of the population has established in the threshold of income lower to one minimum wage for the last eighteen years.