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The conclusions regarding the evolution of inequality in countries or regions are frequently deduced from variations in the point estimations of the usual indicators, without considering the impact of sampling errors on the statistical significance of the changes detected. In this paper, we analyze the influence of different inference methods (asymptotic and bootstrap) on the Gini coefficient in detecting the inter-annual variations of this indicator. With this aim, we first carry out a simulation experiment in order to evaluate the behaviour of different methodologies once we know the real value of the population parameters. Secondly, we present a sensitivity study, applied to data in the Spanish case, in order to analyze the influence of the inference technique on the definition of trends in the behaviour of the Gini coefficient, using data from the European Community Household Panel for the period 1993-2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, changes in the Spanish personal in come distribution along the period 1973-2000 are studied using the parameter estimations of the Dagum model for the state and its autonomous communities. With this aim, in the first place, a theoretical approach to the parameters of Dagum model is developed to obtain a new characterization of each one of them, in relation to its economic interpretation. Available data from Spanish Household Budgets Basic Surveys and European Union Household Panel are used in order to adjust personal income distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]