Disparities in socio-economic outcomes: some positive propositions and their normative implications

Peter Lambert () and S. Subramanian ()

Social Choice and Welfare, 2014, vol. 43, issue 3, 565-576

Abstract: Demographic disparities between the rates of occurrence of an adverse economic outcome can be observed to be increasing even as general social improvements supposedly lead towards the elimination of the adverse outcome in question. Scanlan (Chance 19(2):47–51, 2006 ) noticed this tendency and developed a ‘heuristic rule’ to explain it. In this paper, we explore the issue analytically, providing a criterion from stochastic ordering theory under which one of two demographic groups can be considered disadvantaged and the other advantaged, and showing that Scanlan’s heuristic obtains as a rigorous finding in such cases. Normative implications and appropriate social policy are discussed. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Keywords: D63; I13; I31; I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00355-014-0794-y

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