John A. Bishop, John P. Formby, Paul D. Thistle, Convergence and Divergence of Regional Income Distributions and Welfare, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 76, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 228-235

This paper investigates interstate variation in income inequality. By avoiding inequality indices and focusing directly on the Lorenz curve, the authors provide a more general explanation of the differences in inequality. They find that mean family income, the standard deviation of years of schooling, per capita educational expenditure, and property income are robust predictors of inequality. Of particular interest is their finding that, ceteris paribus, higher per capita education expenditures tend to be associated with states that have income inequality which is greater than the U.S. average.

John A. Bishop, John P. Formby, W. James Smith, Lorenz Dominance and Welfare: Changes in the U.S. Distribution of Income, 1967-1986, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 134-139

John A. Bishop, S. Chakraborti, Paul D. Thistle, Asymptotically Distribution-Free Statistical Inference for Generalized Lorenz Curves, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Nov., 1989), pp. 725-727