Assessing the Polarization of Income Distribution in Iran

Assessing Polarization of income distribution is a new approach that enhances our knowledge and our insight about distribution of income in society. In addition to the significant economic harms of polarization of income distribution, exploring this phenomenon is very important because it is closely linked to the generation of political chaos and social unrest. This article is trying to assess and analyze the polarization of income in Iran between 1390 and 1398. More precisely in this paper, we study the middle class and evaluate polarization by methods presented by Wolfson and the family of indexes proposed by Douclos, Esteban and Ray (DER). According to our results, the middle class has shrunk and indexes of income polarization have increased. Decomposition of polarization index revealed this phenomenon has occurred in big cities and living costs have a great and increasing share.