Estimation of Income Distribution and Detection of Subpopulations : an Explanatory Model

Inequality and polarization analyses are complementary but conceptually different. They are usually implemented independently in practice, with different a priori assumptions and different tools. In this paper, we develop a unique method to study simultaneously these different and complementary concerns. Based on mixture models, the method we develop includes at the same time : an estimation of income distribution with no a priori assumptions a decomposition in several homogeneous subpopulations an explanatory model to study the structure of the income distribution.