IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/1151.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The measurement of welfare change

Author

Listed:
  • Bossert, Walter

    (Department of Economics and CIREQ, University of Montreal)

  • Dutta, Bhaskar

    (Department of Economics, University of Warwick)

Abstract

We propose and characterize a class of measures of welfare change that are based on the generalized Gini social welfare functions. In addition, we analyze these measures in the context of a second-order dominance property that is akin to generalized Lorenz dominance as introduced by Shorrocks (1983) and Kakwani (1984). Because we consider welfare differences rather than welfare levels, the requisite equivalence result involves linear welfare functions (that is, those associated with the generalized Ginis) only, as opposed to the entire class of strictly increasing and S-concave welfare indicators. Journal of Economic

Suggested Citation

  • Bossert, Walter & Dutta, Bhaskar, 2018. "The measurement of welfare change," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1151, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:1151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/2018/twerp_1151_dutta.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. François Bourguignon, 2011. "Non-anonymous growth incidence curves, income mobility and social welfare dominance," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 605-627, December.
    2. Weymark, John A., 1981. "Generalized gini inequality indices," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 409-430, August.
    3. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    4. Kakwani, Nanok C, 1977. "Measurement of Tax Progressivity: An International Comparison," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 87(345), pages 71-80, March.
    5. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2006. "Trends in income inequality, pro-poor income growth, and income mobility," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 531-548, July.
    6. Mehran, Farhad, 1976. "Linear Measures of Income Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(4), pages 805-809, July.
    7. Donaldson, David & Weymark, John A., 1980. "A single-parameter generalization of the Gini indices of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 67-86, February.
    8. repec:bla:econom:v:50:y:1983:i:197:p:3-17 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2003. "Measuring pro-poor growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 93-99, January.
    10. Capeau, Bart & Ooghe, Erwin, 2007. "On comparing heterogeneous populations: Is there really a conflict between welfarism and a concern for greater equality in living standards?," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-28, January.
    11. Dasgupta, Partha & Sen, Amartya & Starrett, David, 1973. "Notes on the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 180-187, April.
    12. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931.
    13. Bossert, Walter, 1990. "An axiomatization of the single-series Ginis," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 82-92, February.
    14. Son, Hyun Hwa, 2004. "A note on pro-poor growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 307-314, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paolo Brunori & Flaviana Palmisano & Vito Peragine, 2022. "Income taxation and equity: new dominance criteria with a microsimulation application," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 509-536, September.
    2. Alekseev, Aleksandr & Sokolov, Mikhail V., 2021. "How to measure the average rate of change?," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 43-59.
    3. Seth, Suman & Yalonetzky, Gaston, 2021. "A mobility decomposition of absolute measures of panel distributional change," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    4. Dirk Van de gaer & Flaviana Palmisano, 2018. "Growth, mobility and social welfare," Working Papers 476, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    5. Van de gaer, Dirk & Palmisano, Flaviana, 2021. "Growth, mobility and social progress," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 164-182.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chakravarty, Satya R. & Sarkar, Palash, 2022. "A synthesis of local and effective tax progressivity measurement," MPRA Paper 115180, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Flaviana Palmisano, 2018. "Evaluating Patterns of Income Growth when Status Matters: A Robust Approach," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(1), pages 147-169, March.
    3. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2003:i:19:p:1-16 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Walter Bossert & Bhaskar Dutta, 2018. "The Measurement of Welfare Change," Working Papers 1004, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    5. Chateauneuf, Alain & Gajdos, Thibault & Wilthien, Pierre-Henry, 2002. "The Principle of Strong Diminishing Transfer," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 311-333, April.
    6. Claudio Zoli, 2002. "Inverse stochastic dominance, inequality measurement and Gini indices," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 77(1), pages 119-161, December.
    7. Flaviana Palmisano & Dirk Van de gaer, 2016. "History-dependent growth incidence: a characterization and an application to the economic crisis in Italy," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 585-603.
    8. Gustavo Bergantiños & Juan D. Moreno-Ternero, 2019. "A family of rules to share the revenues from broadcasting sport events," Working Papers 19.07, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    9. Duclos, J.Y. & Tabi, M., 1996. "Linear Inequality Measures and the Redistribution of Income," Papers 9613, Laval - Recherche en Politique Economique.
    10. Fabio Maccheroni & Pietro Muliere & Claudio Zoli, 2005. "Inverse stochastic orders and generalized Gini functionals," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 529-559.
    11. Oihana Aristondo & JosŽ Luis Garc’a-Lapresta & Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ricardo Alberto Marques Pereira, 2012. "Classical inequality indices, welfare functions, and the dual decomposition," DISA Working Papers 2012/06, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised Jun 2012.
    12. Satya Chakravarty, 2007. "A deprivation-based axiomatic characterization of the absolute Bonferroni index of inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 5(3), pages 339-351, December.
    13. Duclos, J.Y., 1995. "Measuring Progressivity and Inequality," Papers 9525, Laval - Recherche en Politique Economique.
    14. Francesco Andreoli & Claudio Zoli, 2020. "From unidimensional to multidimensional inequality: a review," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 78(1), pages 5-42, April.
    15. Walter Bossert & Susumu Cato & Kohei Kamaga, 2022. "Generalized Poverty-gap Orderings," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 189-215, November.
    16. B. Essama‐Nssah & Peter J. Lambert, 2009. "Measuring Pro‐Poorness: A Unifying Approach With New Results," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(3), pages 752-778, September.
    17. Peter J. Lambert & Helen T. Naughton, 2009. "The Equal Absolute Sacrifice Principle Revisited," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 328-349, April.
    18. Satya R. Chakravarty & Pietro Muliere, 2003. "Welfare indicators: A review and new perspectives. 1. Measurement of inequality," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 457-497.
    19. 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).
    20. Sorger, Gerhard & Stark, Oded, 2013. "Income redistribution going awry: The reversal power of the concern for relative deprivation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-9.
    21. Rolf Aaberge, 2009. "Ranking intersecting Lorenz curves," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 33(2), pages 235-259, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income inequality ; welfare change ; dominance criteria ; generalized Ginis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:1151. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Margaret Nash (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.