An Investigation of Income and Wage Inequality in Turkey Using Burgernomics

ABSTRACTThis study delves into the multifaceted issue of inequality in Turkey, analyzing overall and regional disparities as well as wage and gender inequalities in the labor market. Through the lens of the Big Mac Index, we investigate purchasing power and discover a decrease in regional inequality between 2002 and 2020. However, our research findings indicate a widening income gap between capital owners or the working rich and workers, particularly evident after 2015. Moreover, the wage gap between male and female white-collar workers has widened since the 2018 currency crisis, while the gap between male and female blue-collar workers has shown improvement.KEYWORDS: Big Mac IndexBurgernomicsInequalityTurkeyJEL CLASSIFICATION: D31J71 Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.2. https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index3. As of 2021, Turkey has 81 cities. Each city has its own capital and its own governors, who are appointed by the elected government. Cities in Turkey are established by the central government through legislation, which involves conducting research, consulting with local officials, and submitting a proposal to parliament for approval, after which a governor is appointed to oversee administration and services.4. https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=Gelir-ve-Yasam-Kosullari-Arastirmasi-2021–455815. https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=Income-and-Living-Conditions-Survey-2020–37404&dil=26. Akarsu (Citation2022) modified the Gini index, we have used that version of the Gini index.7. In this study, every figure is our own plot and calculation except for Figure A1 in the Appendix.8. Due to data limitations, we cannot gauge inequality within Turkish cities.9. We use the terms “capitalists” and “the working rich,” introduced in Piketty’s (Citation2015) book, which analyzes income inequality and wealth distribution. Marx (Citation1875) had previously used the term “capitalist” to describe the owners of capital and means of production. In addition, the term “the working rich” has been employed by various scholars, including Piketty (Citation2015) and Godechot (Citation2016), to refer to individuals who have high incomes from work rather than investment or inheritance. These terms have become part of the discourse on income inequality and are now widely used in academic research and public discussions on the subject.Additional informationNotes on contributorsMahmut Zeki AkarsuMahmut Zeki Akarsu is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Warsaw. His research interests encompass macroeconomics and development economics. His current focus is on wage and income inequality, both in the United States and in middle-income countries, as well as on issues such as historical inequality, gender inequality, the Big Mac Affordability Index, the political economy, and the Turkish economy.Orkideh GharehgozliOrkideh Gharehgozli is an assistant professor in economics at Montclair State University. Her research interests encompass applied econometrics, statistics, income inequality, and labor economics. She earned her Ph.D. from the City University of New York.Vidya AtalVidya Atal is a professor of economics at Montclair State University. Her research interests include studying various topics of Industrial Organization, for example, the patent policies in the United States, open source software licensing, firms' strategies while in the patent-race or studying their investment decisions in R&D. In addition, she finds several topics in Development Economics very interesting, like women's empowerment, intra-household bargaining, gender gap, etc. She holds a Master's and a Ph.D. degree in economics from Cornell University.