This paper provides a robust normative evaluation of the spectacular growth episode that India has experienced in the last 15 years. Specifically, the paper compares the evolution, between 1998, 1996 and 2001 of the distribution of several important individual attributes on the basis of ethically robust dominance criteria. The individual attributes considered are real consumptions (measured at the individual level), literacy rate, infant mortality and violent crime rates (all measured at the district levels). District level variables are interpreted as (local) public goods which, along with consumption, are assumed to contribute to individual well being. The robust criteria used are generalizations, to more than two attributes, of the first and the second order dominance criteria of Atkinson and Bourguignon (1982) and are known to correspond to the unanimity of utilitarian value judgements taken over a specific class of individual utility functions. The main result of the empirical analysis is that all utilitarian rankings of distributions of the four attributes who assume tha individual utility functions satisfy the assumptions of second order dominance aggree that India is better off in 2002 than in 1996. Furthermore, if one removes crime from the list of attributes, the dominance is shown to apply steadily over the whole period and to be of first order on the period 1988-1996.
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Paper provided by Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France in its series IDEP Working Papers with number
0704.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - General Welfare I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs N35 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Income, and Wealth - - - Asia including Middle East O18 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Regional, Urban, and Rural Analyses
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1983.
"Ranking Income Distributions,"
Economica,
London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 50(197), pages 3-17, February.
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