Understanding Classical Decomposability of Inequality Measures: A Graphical Analysis

Tatiana Komarova

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: This paper's objective is pedagogical and interpretive. Namely, it gives a simple geometric analysis of classical (by which I mean population-share-weighted or income-share-weighted) inequality decomposability in the simplest nontrivial setting of three individuals. Income distributions in this case can be represented as points on the two-dimensional income-share simplex. In this representation, classical decomposability translates into concrete geometric restrictions of within- and between-group components. The geometric framework makes it possible to localize and compare violations of decomposability across inequality measures. The analysis is applied to the Mean Log Deviation, the Gini coefficient, the coefficient of variation, and the Theil index.

Date: 2026-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.15699 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2602.15699

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().