# Known data gap — Pacific-7 inequality

**Severity:** structural; affects Segment 3 (Inequality) and any downstream synthesis touching the Pacific subregion.

## What the gap is

The World Inequality Database (WID) does **not** publish country-specific inequality estimates for **7 of the 17 EAP economies in this project**:

- Fiji (FJI)
- Kiribati (KIR)
- Solomon Islands (SLB)
- Tonga (TON)
- Tuvalu (TUV)
- Vanuatu (VUT)
- Samoa (WSM)

WID instead publishes a single **Pacific-7 regional aggregate** time series and reuses it under each country's label. This was discovered in the P13 data-editor audit (`quality_reports/data_audit_wid_inequality_20260427.md`).

## Consequence for the project

Any country-level inequality chart, table, or claim about the Pacific-7 economies based on WID is **misleading** — the data is regional, not country-specific.

**Operational decision (user-approved 2026-04-28):**

- Drop the Pacific 7 from all country-level inequality analyses in Segment 3.
- Effective EAP country-specific sample = 10 (Indonesia, Philippines, Viet Nam, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea).
- Every figure, table, agent output, and report section produced under Segment 3 must clearly note this exclusion.

## Future-research follow-up (open)

Country-level inequality data for the Pacific 7 must be sought from:

- National statistical offices of each Pacific country
- World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS)
- Asian Development Bank household surveys
- Pacific Data Hub (https://pacificdata.org)

These sources are out of scope for the current Segment 3 pass. Picking them up should be considered:

- as an extension to Segment 3
- or as a stand-alone follow-on note for the World Bank engagement

## How agents and scripts must propagate this notice

- `data-editor` audits of any future Pacific-related dataset must reference this file.
- `r-reviewer` audits of figures must check that Pacific-7 country labels are not shown as country-specific inequality data.
- Quarto reports must include this caveat in the Segment 3 introduction and in every figure caption/table footnote that involves the Pacific subregion.
- The cross-cutting synthesis section in Segment 4 must explicitly carry forward this gap.