Variable Populations and the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality: A Selective Overview

S. Subramanian ()
Additional contact information
S. Subramanian: Madras Institute of Development Studies and Indian Institute of Technology

Chapter Chapter 5 in Perspectives on Economic Development and Policy in India, 2017, pp 105-127 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The present paper is a selective overview, very considerably based on work in which the author himself has been involved, of the difficulties which can arise in the measurement of poverty and inequality when one compares populations of differing size. The paper begins with certain problems attending the measurement of poverty when the overall population size is fixed but the numbers of the poor are permitted to vary: one discovers a certain commonality of outcomes between Derek Parfit’s quest for a satisfactory theory of wellbeing and the economist’s quest for a satisfactory measure of poverty. Complications arising from both the poverty and inequality rankings of distributions when the aggregate size of the population is allowed to vary are also investigated. It is suggested in the paper that, from the perspectives of both logical consistency and ethical appeal, there are problems involved in variable population comparisons of poverty and inequality which deserve to be taken note of and enquired into.

Keywords: Poverty; Inequality; Total principle; Average principle; Fixed population axioms; Variable population axioms; Impossibility theorems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I30 I32 J19 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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:isbchp:978-981-10-3150-2_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811031502

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-3150-2_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

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