Definitions of equivalence scales are usually based on a household utility function. This may be founded on an assumption of the household maximizing a welfare function of individual utilities. Basing inter-household comparisons of welfare on this approach is fallacious because households put different weight on the utility of the various household members, a weighting that does not necessarily correspond to an ethically sound aggregation of utility. This is called the Pangloss critique. To solve the problem, I suggest keeping the model of household behavior, but to introduce a new function to aggregate the household members' utilities. Equivalence scales based on this approach are shown to have desirable properties. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd..
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 49 (2003) Issue (Month): 4 (December) Pages: 555-568 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF