Inequality Measurement with Subgroup Decomposability and Level-Sensitivity

S. Subramanian ()
Additional contact information
S. Subramanian: Independent Scholar

Chapter Chapter 15 in Social Values and Social Indicators, 2021, pp 189-201 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Subgroup Decomposability is a very useful property in an inequality measure, and level-sensitivity, which requires a given level of inequality to acquire a greater significance the poorer a population is, is a distributionally appealing axiom for an inequality index to satisfy. In this paper, which is largely in the nature of a recollection of important results on the characterization of subgroup decomposable inequality measures, the mutual compatibility of subgroup decomposability and level-sensitivity is examined, with specific reference to a classification of inequality measures into relative, absolute, centrist, and unit-consistent types. Arguably, the most appealing combination of properties for a symmetric, continuous, normalized, transfer-preferring and replication-invariant (S-C-N-T-R) inequality measure to satisfy is that of subgroup decomposability, centrism, unit-consistency and level-sensitivity. The existence of such an inequality index is (as far as this author is aware) yet to be established. However, it can be shown, as is done in this paper, that there does exist an S-C-N-T-R measure satisfying the (plausibly) next-best combination of properties—those of decomposability, centrism, unit-consistency and level-neutrality.

Keywords: Subgroup decomposability; Level-sensitivity; Absolute inequality measure; Relative inequality measure; Centrist inequality measure; Unit-consistency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:thechp:978-981-16-0428-7_15

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811604287

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-0428-7_15

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Themes in Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().