IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/ecnphi/v19y2003i02p241-263_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Inequality By Counting €˜Complaints’: Theory And Empirics

Author

Listed:
  • Devooght, Kurt

Abstract

This paper examines how people assess inequality of income distribution and how inequality could be measured. We start from the philosophical analysis of Temkin, who distinguishes nine plausible aspects of inequality. His approach is based on the concept of ‘complaints’ or distances between incomes. We examine the Temkin approach by means of the questionnaire-experimental method pioneered by Amiel and Cowell to find out whether the aspects of equality have any plausibility for student respondents and, if so, whether there are aspects which are more appealing than others. Both the numerical and verbal responses show that a considerable majority of the respondents might be influenced by the intuitions included in the combination of the Weighted Additive Principle and the Average view of complaints. The questionnaire results also shed some empirical light on the acceptance of the Transfer Principle and the attitudes towards the Sequence.

Suggested Citation

  • Devooght, Kurt, 2003. "Measuring Inequality By Counting €˜Complaints’: Theory And Empirics," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 241-263, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:ecnphi:v:19:y:2003:i:02:p:241-263_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0266267103001147/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emma Aisbett, 2007. "Why are the Critics So Convinced that Globalization is Bad for the Poor?," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization and Poverty, pages 33-86, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Tim Krieger & Stefan Traub, 2008. "Back to Bismarck? Shifting Preferences for Intragenerational Redistribution in OECD Pension Systems," Working Papers CIE 13, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:ecnphi:v:19:y:2003:i:02:p:241-263_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/eap .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.