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Journal ArticleDOI

On the Measurement of Inequality

01 Sep 1970-Journal of Economic Theory (Academic Press)-Vol. 2, Iss: 3, pp 244-263
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
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Proceedings ArticleDOI
15 Jun 2019
TL;DR: Task-Agnostic Meta-Learning (TAML) as mentioned in this paper proposes an entropy-based approach that meta-learns an unbiased initial model with the largest uncertainty over the output labels by preventing it from overperforming in classification tasks.
Abstract: Meta-learning approaches have been proposed to tackle the few-shot learning problem. Typically, a meta-learner is trained on a variety of tasks in the hopes of being generalizable to new tasks. However, the generalizability on new tasks of a meta-learner could be fragile when it is over-trained on existing tasks during meta-training phase. In other words, the initial model of a meta-learner could be too biased towards existing tasks to adapt to new tasks, especially when only very few examples are available to update the model. To avoid a biased meta-learner and improve its generalizability, we propose a novel paradigm of Task-Agnostic Meta-Learning (TAML) algorithms. Specifically, we present an entropy-based approach that meta-learns an unbiased initial model with the largest uncertainty over the output labels by preventing it from over-performing in classification tasks. Alternatively, a more general inequality-minimization TAML is presented for more ubiquitous scenarios by directly minimizing the inequality of initial losses beyond the classification tasks wherever a suitable loss can be defined. Experiments on benchmarked datasets demonstrate that the proposed approaches outperform compared meta-learning algorithms in both few-shot classification and reinforcement learning tasks.

378 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: One tradition in sociology suggests American exceptionalism, while another argues for convergence across countries in the world as mentioned in this paper. But are American attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries?
Abstract: Are American attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries? One tradition in sociology suggests American “exceptionalism,” while another argues for convergence across...

374 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examine inequality decomposition by income source and describe a general, regression-based approach for decomposing inequality, which provides an efficient and flexible way to quantify the roles of variables like education and age in a multivariate context.
Abstract: We examine inequality decompositions by income source and describe a general, regression-based approach for decomposing inequality. The approach provides an efficient and flexible way to quantify the roles of variables like education and age in a multivariate context. We illustrate the method using survey data from China. The empirical results demonstrate how sharply different conclusions can emerge for different decomposition rules. We explain how these differences reflect the treatment of equally-distributed sources of income, and we discuss implications for how results from inequality decomposition are interpreted. A renewed interest in economic growth, political economy, and the distribution of income has again placed the economics of income inequality firmly on the academic research agenda. Relatively poor performances in Latin America have been contrasted with success stories in East Asia, and recent evidence on the changing income distributions of emerging economic giants like China has

370 citations

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: The paper surveys the economics literature on equity in health care financing and delivery and focuses, for the most part, on empirical work, especially that involving international and temporal comparisons.
Abstract: The paper surveys the economics literature on equity in health care financing and delivery. The focus is, for the most part, on empirical work, especially that involving international and temporal comparisons. There is, however, some discussion of the concept and definition of equity. The empirical sections cover the literature on equity in health care financing (progressivity and horizontal equity of health care financing arrangements), equity in health care delivery (horizontal equity in the sense of treating persons in equal need similarly), and equality of health.

360 citations

Posted Content

359 citations


Cites background from "On the Measurement of Inequality"

  • ...For example, one can correct for the possible distributional inequities of an unconstrained cost-benefit analysis (Anthony Atkinson 1970; Arnold Harberger 1978)....

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI

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...

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Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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