On the Measurement of Inequality
TL;DR: In this paper, the problem of comparing two frequency distributions f(u) of an attribute y which for convenience I shall refer to as income is defined as a risk in the theory of decision-making under uncertainty.
About: This article is published in Journal of Economic Theory.The article was published on 1970-09-01. It has received 5002 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Income inequality metrics & Income distribution.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: This work used publication databases and web searches to identify compilations of health indicators and health metrics and found 14 long-term large-area compilATIONS of healthicators and determinants and seven compilation of environmental health indicators, comprising hundreds of metrics.
Abstract: Though numbers alone may be insufficient to capture the nuances of population health, they provide a common language of appraisal and furnish clear evidence of disparities and inequalities. Over the past 30 years, facilitated by high speed computing and electronics, considerable investment has been made in the collection and analysis of urban health indicators, environmental indicators, and methods for their amalgamation. Much of this work has been characterized by a perceived need for a standard set of indicators. We used publication databases (e.g. Medline) and web searches to identify compilations of health indicators and health metrics. We found 14 long-term large-area compilations of health indicators and determinants and seven compilations of environmental health indicators, comprising hundreds of metrics. Despite the plethora of indicators, these compilations have striking similarities in the domains from which the indicators are drawn—an unappreciated concordance among the major collections. Research with these databases and other sources has produced a small number of composite indices, and a number of methods for the amalgamation of indicators and the demonstration of disparities. These indices have been primarily used for large-area (nation, region, state) comparisons, with both developing and developed countries, often for purposes of ranking. Small area indices have been less explored, in part perhaps because of the vagaries of data availability, and because idiosyncratic local conditions require flexible approaches as opposed to a fixed format. One result has been advances in the ability to compare large areas, but with a concomitant deficiency in tools for public health workers to assess the status of local health and health disparities. Large area assessments are important, but the need for small area action requires a greater focus on local information and analysis, emphasizing method over prespecified content.
46 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors measure rural poverty by counting people who live in darkness at night: combining high-resolution global satellite data on satellite data collected by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Abstract: Do oil booms reduce rural poverty and inequality? To study this we measure rural poverty by counting people who live in darkness at night: combining high-resolution global satellite data on...
46 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the problem of income inequality for a model in which households may have different incomes and different types was considered, and the equivalence scales are uniquely and implicitly determined by the corresponding welfare ordering.
46 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze Spanish expenditure and income distribution during the crucial period of the recovery of democracy in the middle 1970s, after which extensive reforms in political and welfare institutions were conducted.
46 citations
TL;DR: The advances in the economics of the public sector during the past quarter century have been as pronounced as in any field within economics as mentioned in this paper, and public finance has become a rigorous branch of applied microeconomics, incorporating the best thinking and most advanced tools of both theoretical economics and econometrics.
46 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: In this article, a measure of risk aversion in the small, the risk premium or insurance premium for an arbitrary risk, and a natural concept of decreasing risk aversion are discussed and related to one another.
Abstract: This paper concerns utility functions for money. A measure of risk aversion in the small, the risk premium or insurance premium for an arbitrary risk, and a natural concept of decreasing risk aversion are discussed and related to one another. Risks are also considered as a proportion of total assets.
5,207 citations
Posted Content•
1,748 citations
"On the Measurement of Inequality" refers background in this paper
...3 See Rothschild and Stiglitz [13], Hadar and Russell [ 5 ], and Hanoch and Levy [6]....
[...]
1,738 citations
"On the Measurement of Inequality" refers methods in this paper
...Then by applying the results of Pratt [l 11, Arrow [ 2 ], and others, we can see that this requirement (which may be referred to as constant (relative) inequality-aversion) implies that U(y) has the form...
[...]
TL;DR: JSTOR as discussed by the authors is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship, which is used to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources.
Abstract: you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
1,544 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis of the first step of the decision-making process of an individual decision maker among alternative risky ventures is presented, in terms of a single dimension such as money, both for the utility functions and for the probability distributions.
Abstract: Publisher Summary The choice of an individual decision maker among alternative risky ventures may be regarded as a two-step procedure. The decision maker chooses an efficient set among all available portfolios, independently of his tastes or preferences. Then, the decision maker applies individual preferences to this set to choose the desired portfolio. The subject of this chapter is the analysis of the first step. It deals with optimal selection rules that minimize the efficient set by discarding any portfolio that is inefficient in the sense that it is inferior to a member of the efficient set, from point of view of each and every individual, when all individuals' utility functions are assumed to be of a given general class of admissible functions. The analysis presented in the chapter is carried out in terms of a single dimension such as money, both for the utility functions and for the probability distributions. However, the results may easily be extended, with minor changes in the theorems and the proofs, to the multivariate case. The chapter explains a necessary and sufficient condition for efficiency, when no further restrictions are imposed on the utility functions. It presents proofs of the optimal efficiency criterion in the presence of general risk aversion, that is, for concave utility functions.
1,160 citations