On Analyzing the World Distribution of Income

Consideration of world inequality should cause reexamination of the key concepts underlying the welfare approach to measuring income inequality and its relation to measuring poverty. This reexamination leads to exploration of a new measure that allows poverty and inequality to be considered in the s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Atkinson, Anthony B., Brandolini, Andrea
Published: World Bank 2012
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Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4513
Description
Summary:Consideration of world inequality should cause reexamination of the key concepts underlying the welfare approach to measuring income inequality and its relation to measuring poverty. This reexamination leads to exploration of a new measure that allows poverty and inequality to be considered in the same framework, incorporates different approaches to measuring inequality, and allows varied expressions of the cost of inequality. Applied to the world distribution of income for 1820–1992, the new measure provides different perspectives on the evolution of global inequality.