On analysing the world distribution of income

Anthony B. Atkinson and Andrea Brandolini ()
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Anthony B. Atkinson: Nuffield College, Oxford

No 97, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: This paper argues that consideration of world inequality should cause us to re-examine the key concepts underlying the welfare approach to the measurement of income inequality and the inter-relation between the measurement of inequality and the measurement of poverty. There are three reasons why we feel that a re-examination is necessary: (i) the extent of global income differences means that we cannot simply carry over the methods used at a national level; we need a more flexible measure; (ii) we have to reconcile measures of world inequality and world poverty; and (iii) we need to explore more fully the different ways in which measures may be relative or absolute. This leads us to propose a new measure, which (a) combines poverty and inequality, including provision for those who are concerned only with poverty, (b) incorporates different approaches to the measurement of inequality; and (c) allows the cost of inequality to be expressed in different ways. Applied to the world distribution for the period 1820-1992, the new measure provides different perspectives on the evolution of global inequality.

Keywords: global income inequality; absolute vs. relative inequality; poverty; world citizens. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 C80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
Date: Written
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Related works:
Working Paper: On analysing the world distribution of income (2009)
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