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Popular support for social evaluation functions

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  • Rafael Salas
  • Juan Rodríguez

Abstract

This paper provides sufficient conditions under which the preferences of a social decision maker accord with majority voting. We show that an additive and monotone utilitarian social evaluation function is consistent with the outcomes of majority voting for the class of income distributions that are symmetric under a strictly increasing transformation. An example is the lognormal distribution. The required symmetry condition is generally accepted employing panel data for 116 countries from the World Bank’s POVCAL database.In this manner, the proposed methodology provides the consistent degree of inequality aversion and shows that median income is a good proxy for welfare. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Rafael Salas & Juan Rodríguez, 2013. "Popular support for social evaluation functions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(4), pages 985-1014, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:40:y:2013:i:4:p:985-1014
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-012-0669-z
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    2. Rodríguez, Juan Gabriel & Salas, Rafael, 2014. "The Gini coefficient: Majority voting and social welfare," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 214-223.
    3. Michael Savage, 2016. "Poorest Made Poorer? Decomposing income losses at the bottom of the income distribution during the Great Recession," Papers WP528, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

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