ABSTRACT
The ASEAN countries are in a golden stage of development, although the uneven regional development remains a prominent challenge to integrated growth. The study tries to investigate regional inequality in ASEAN countries from an outer space perspective. It first estimates the relationship between nighttime light intensity and GDP per capita for the 10 ASEAN countries at the national level, based on which it predicts regional incomes at the subnational level to assess regional inequality and explores the affecting factors. The results indicate that regional inequality in the ASEAN region and economic development present an inverted N-shaped relationship. The overall inequality of the region is largely attributed to the uneven development between countries. It is also found that transportation, urbanization, openness, mineral rents, and tax revenue are all significantly relevant to regional inequality.
Acknowledgments
We thank the anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions helped improve and clarify this manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1540496X.2022.2119810