The measurement of opportunity inequality: a cardinality-based approach

Efe Ok and Laurence Kranich ()

Social Choice and Welfare, 1998, vol. 15, issue 2, 263-287

Abstract: We consider the problem of ranking distributions of opportunity sets on the basis of equality. First, conditional on a given ranking of individual opportunity sets, we define the notion of an equalizing transformation. Then, assuming that the opportunity sets are ranked according to the cardinality ordering, we formulate the analogues of the notions of the Lorenz partial ordering, equalizing (Dalton) transfers, and inequality averse social welfare functions - concepts which play a central role in the literature on income inequality. Our main result is a cardinality-based analogue of the fundamental theorem of inequality measurement: one distribution Lorenz dominates another if and only if the former can be obtained from the latter by a finite sequence of rank preserving equalizations, and if and only if the former is ranked higher than the latter by all inequality averse social welfare functions. In addition, we characterize the smallest monotonic and transitive extension of our cardinality-based Lorenz inequality ordering.

Date: 1998-02-27
Note: Received: 2 May 1995 / Accepted: 11 October 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00355/papers/8015002/80150263.pdf (application/pdf)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/0035 ... 15002/80150263.ps.gz (application/postscript)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

Related works:
Working Paper: The measurement of opportunity inequality: a cardinality-based approach (1995)
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:sochwe:v:15:y:1998:i:2:p:263-287

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... c+theory/journal/355

Access Statistics for this article

Social Choice and Welfare is currently edited by Bhaskar Dutta, Marc Fleurbaey, Elizabeth Maggie Penn and Clemens Puppe

More articles in Social Choice and Welfare from Springer, The Society for Social Choice and Welfare Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().