Evolutionary dynamics of social inequality and coincidence of Gini and Kolkata indices under unrestricted competition

Suchismita Banerjee, Soumyajyoti Biswas, Bikas K. Chakrabarti, Sai Krishna Challagundla, Asim Ghosh, Suhaas Reddy Guntaka, Hanesh Koganti, Anvesh Reddy Kondapalli, Raju Maiti, Manipushpak Mitra and Dachepalli R. S. Ram
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Suchismita Banerjee: Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata 700108, West Bengal, India
Soumyajyoti Biswas: Department of Physics, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh - 522240, India
Bikas K. Chakrabarti: Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata 700108, West Bengal, India3Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata 700064, West Bengal, India
Sai Krishna Challagundla: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh-522240, India
Asim Ghosh: Department of Physics, Raghunathpur College, Raghunathpur, Purulia 723133, West Bengal, India
Suhaas Reddy Guntaka: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh-522240, India
Hanesh Koganti: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh-522240, India
Anvesh Reddy Kondapalli: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh-522240, India
Raju Maiti: Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata 700108, West Bengal, India
Dachepalli R. S. Ram: Department of Physics, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh - 522240, India

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), 2023, vol. 34, issue 04, 1-29

Abstract: Social inequalities are ubiquitous, and here we show that the values of the Gini (g) and Kolkata (k) indices, two generic inequality indices, approach each other (starting from g=0 and k=0.5 for equality) as the competitions grow in various social institutions like markets, universities and elections. It is further shown that these two indices become equal and stabilize at a value (at g=k≃0.87) under unrestricted competitions. We propose to view this coincidence of inequality indices as a generalized version of the (more than a) century old 80-20 law of Pareto. Furthermore, the coincidence of the inequality indices noted here is very similar to the ones seen before for self-organized critical (SOC) systems. The observations here, therefore, stand as a quantitative support toward viewing interacting socio-economic systems in the framework of SOC, an idea conjectured for years.

Keywords: Social inequality; Gini index; Kolkata index; nonlinearity of Lorenz function; income distribution; citation distribution; evolutionary dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1142/S0129183123500481

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