The β Family of Inequality Measures

Luis José Imedio Olmedo (imedio@uma.es), Encarnación M. Parrado Gallardo (mparrado@uma.es) and Elena Bárcena Martín (barcenae@uma.es)
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Luis José Imedio Olmedo: Dpto. Estadistica y Econometria (68). Facultad de Ciencias Economicas y Empresariales. Campus El Ejido s/n. Universidad de Malaga, 29013 Malaga.
Encarnación M. Parrado Gallardo: Dpto. Estadistica y Econometria (68). Facultad de Ciencias Economicas y Empresariales. Campus El Ejido s/n. Universidad de Malaga, 29013 Malaga
Elena Bárcena Martín: Dpto. Estadistica y Econometria (68). Facultad de Ciencias Economicas y Empresariales. Campus El Ejido s/n. Universidad de Malaga, 29013 Malaga. Telf. +34 952 131 191
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Elena Barcena-Martin

No 289, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: This paper introduces and analyses, both normatively and statistically, a new class of inequality measures. This class generalizes and comprises different well-known families of inequality measures as particular cases. The elements of this new class are obtained by weighting local inequality evaluated through the Bonferroni curve. The weights are the density functions of the beta distributions over [0,1]. Therefore, the weights are not necessarily monotonic. This allows us to choose the inequality measures that are more or less sensitive to changes that could take place in any part of the distribution. As a consequence of the different weighting schemes attached to the indexes, the elements of the class introduce very dissimilar value judgements in the measurement of inequality and welfare. The possibility of choosing the index that focuses on a specific percentile, and not necessarily on the extremes of the distribution, is one of the advantages of our proposal.

Keywords: Lorenz curve; Bonferroni curve; preference distributions; inequality aversion; beta distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C10 D31 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2013-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm and nep-ltv
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2013-289

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