Analysis of Income Inequality in Iranian Provinces: Ranking and Comparison Using Various Indices

One of the fundamental problems of countries is poverty and economic inequality.Income distribution in economics plays an important role in analyzing these inequalities.Investigating economic inequalities in the country's provinces is of great importance from the perspective of regional planning.The main purpose of this article is to conduct statistical studies on income inequality indicators in the country's provinces.This research has been conducted in a descriptive and analytical manner.The data used were extracted from the urban and rural household income and expenditure survey in 2019 and 2020.In order to rank the provinces, the data was analyzed separately for urban and rural areas and the results were presented in a comparative manner.The results of this study show that provinces such as Sistan and Baluchestan, North Khorasan, Kerman, and South Khorasan have a low rank in terms of average income and expenditure, which in a way reflects the deprivations in these provinces of income-generating and job opportunities.In contrast, the provinces of Tehran, Alborz, Mazandaran, and Bushehr are known as the provinces with the highest income and expenditure in the country.Based on the results obtained, suggestions have been made for policymakers to develop special development programs to reduce economic inequalities in deprived provinces.