Canonical correlation of development on inequality in Iran

The relationship between development and inequality in contemporary Iran has always been one of the most important and challenging issues that has occupied the minds of many thinkers in Iranian society. In this regard, in the present study, an attempt has been made to experimentally examine the relationship between the set of variables that make up the socioeconomic development construct and the set of variables that make up the construct of social inequality in Iranian society by relying on canonical correlation analysis.

Considering the nature of the topic as well as the main question, the current research is an explanatory one that the in-country quantitative comparative method was used with the unit of analysis “Iran/year” for the period from 1368 to 1398.

The value of the canonical correlation coefficient for the first principal root was equal to 0.898, which indicated a strong relationship between the combination of two sets of variables indicating the constructs of socioeconomic development and social inequality. The square of this correlation was equal to 0.806, which showed that the set of variables that make up socioeconomic development have been able to predict and explain about 81% of the changes in the set of variables that make up social inequality. The value of the canonical correlation coefficient of the second function was also equal to 0.692, which was interpreted according to its significance level.

The first root canonical correlation results showed that there was a very strong relationship (with a correlation coefficient of 0.90) between a linear combination of two sets of variables that make up socio-economic development and social inequality in Iran, which was statistically significant. The final result is that the increase in socio-economic development indicators between 1368 and 1398 in Iran has greatly increased the possibility of social inequality.