Income Distribution in Rural Areas of Sistan-and-Baluchestan Province of Iran during 1998-2001

Today many authorities and scholars in social science reach to this consensus that income distribution is an effective factor in the creation of the differences in standard of living and socio-economic and cultural gaps and the incidence of poverty. On this basis it has been recommended that policy makers and planners devote special attention to distributive consequences of the adopted economic strategies and socio economic challenges emanating from socio-economic policies. The present paper examines income distribution in rural areas of Sistan-and-Baluchestan province during 1998-2001. In this study income distribution was estimated using Gini coefficient with two types of methods, i.e., separable and overall data.The results showed inequality coefficient has increased from 0.394 in 1997 to 0.428 in 2001in rural areas of the province. Also, the comparison of Gini coefficient within each decile has showed that inequality within the highest income household group (tenth decile) and the lowest income household group (first decile) were more than other deciles. Such that, Gini coefficient for the first decile has increased from 0.157 in 1997 to 0.222 in 2001 and for the tenth decile has increased from 0.129 to 0.266 in the same period. The Gini coefficient comparison among the poor indicated that on average the inequality among the poor was more than that of the households of first decile. In sum, in the population under study, poverty has not confined to first decile.