GENERALIZED GIN 1 INEQUALITY INDICES

Abstract When incomes are ranked in descending order the social-evaluation function corresponding to the Gini relative inequality index can be written as a linear function withthe weights being the odd numbers in increasing order. We generalize this function by allowing the weights to be an arbitrary non-decreasing sequence of numbers. This results in a class of generalized Gini relative inequality indices and a class of generalized Gini absolute inequality indices. An axiomatic characterization of the latter class is also provided.

[1]  K. Basu.  Revealed Preference of Government , 1980 .

[2]  Partha Dasgupta,et al.  Guidelines for Project Evaluation. , 1972 .

[3]  Charles Blackorby,et al.  Measures of relative equality and their meaning in terms of social welfare , 1978 .

[4]  S. Kolm.  The Optimal Production of Social Justice , 1969 .

[5]  Henri Theil,et al.  The measurement of inequality by components of income , 1979 .

[6]  John C. H. Fei,et al.  Growth and the Family Distribution of Income by Factor Components , 1978 .

[7]  J. Aczél,et al.  Lectures on Functional Equations and Their Applications , 1968 .

[8]  C. Gini.  Measurement of Inequality of Incomes , 1921 .

[9]  Charles Blackorby,et al.  A Theoretical Treatment of Indices of Absolute Inequality , 1980 .

[10]  John A. Weymark,et al.  A single-parameter generalization of the Gini indices of inequality , 1980 .

[11]  A. Sen.  On Economic Inequality , 1974 .

[12]  K. Kuga,et al.  Additivity and the entropy concept: An axiomatic approach to inequality measurement , 1981 .

[13]  H. Dalton.  The Measurement of the Inequality of Incomes , 1920 .

[14]  Arthur Cecil Pigou,et al.  Wealth and Welfare. , 1913 .

[15]  G. Debreu,et al.  Theory of Value , 1959 .

[16]  Serge-Christophe Kolm.  Unequal inequalities. I , 1976 .

[17]  A. Sen,et al.  Notes on the measurement of inequality , 1973 .

[18]  Graham Pyatt,et al.  On the interpretation and disaggregation of GINI coefficients , 1976 .

[19]  W. Eichhorn.  Functional equations in economics , 1978 .

[20]  A. Atkinson.  On the measurement of inequality , 1970 .