Relationships between inequality in income and representation

What is it about?

This short research note uses the index of malapportionment (the difference between the number of political seats and population shares) and the Gini index, a commonly used measure of income inequality. Using these indexes the research finds that democracies with a high income inequality tend to have high levels of inequality in representation.

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Photo by Marco Oriolesi on Unsplash

Photo by Marco Oriolesi on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This research expands upon the index of malapportionment presented by Samuels and Snyder (BJPS, 2001) and relates it to income inequality using the Gini Index. This relationship more broadly demonstrates the ties between economic and electoral inequality.