Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all? Revisiting the extended concentration index

Guido Erreygers, Philip Clarke and Tom Van Ourti

Working Papers from University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics

Abstract: This paper explores three alternative indices for measuring health inequalities in a way that takes into account attitudes towards inequality. Firstly, we revisit the extended concentration index which has been proposed to generalise the value judgements implicit in the standard concentration index. We then examine two alternative measures which have desirable mirror properties. One of these indices applies symmetric weights which is a property of the standard concentration index. We also examine the bias that arises when all three measures are applied to small samples. We propose a correction for this small sample bias and use Monte Carlo simulations to check whether it works. We empirically compare the different indices for under-five mortality rates in developing countries.

Keywords: Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality; Extended concentration index; Inequality aversion; Small-sample bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I19 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ant:wpaper:2010015

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