IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v147y2012i4p1427-1449.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Multidimensional inequality comparisons: A compensation perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Muller, Christophe
  • Trannoy, Alain

Abstract

We provide a unified treatment of the two approaches pioneered by Atkinson and Bourguignon (1982, 1987) [3,4] by resorting to compensation principles in the bivariate case. We treat the attributes of individual utility asymmetrically by assuming that one attribute can be used to compensate another. Our main result consists of two sufficient second-order stochastic dominance conditions. In the case where the compensated variable has a discrete distribution, the distribution of the compensating variable must satisfy a condition which degenerates to the Sequential Generalized Lorenz test for identical marginal distributions of the compensated variable. Furthermore, the distributions of the compensated variable must satisfy the Generalized Lorenz test.

Suggested Citation

  • Muller, Christophe & Trannoy, Alain, 2012. "Multidimensional inequality comparisons: A compensation perspective," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1427-1449.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:147:y:2012:i:4:p:1427-1449
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2011.09.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002205311100130X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jet.2011.09.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Banks, James & Johnson, Paul, 1994. "Equivalence Scale Relativities Revisited," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(425), pages 883-890, July.
    2. Gravel, Nicolas & Moyes, Patrick, 2012. "Ethically robust comparisons of bidimensional distributions with an ordinal attribute," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1384-1426.
    3. Anthony F. Shorrocks & James E. Foster, 1987. "Transfer Sensitive Inequality Measures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(3), pages 485-497.
    4. Fleurbaey, Marc, 2012. "Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653591.
    5. Stephen P. Jenkins & Peter J. Lambert, 1993. "Ranking Income Distributions When Needs Differ," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 39(4), pages 337-356, December.
    6. Erik Schokkaert & Kurt Devooght, 2003. "Responsibility-sensitive fair compensation in different cultures," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 21(2), pages 207-242, October.
    7. Anthony B. Atkinson & François Bourguignon, 1987. "Income Distribution and Differences in Needs," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: George R. Feiwel (ed.), Arrow and the Foundations of the Theory of Economic Policy, chapter 12, pages 350-370, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Anthony Shorrocks, 2004. "Inequality and welfare evaluation of heterogeneous income distributions," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 2(3), pages 193-218, July.
    9. Denuit, Michel & Mesfioui, Mhamed, 2010. "Generalized increasing convex and directionally convex orders," LIDAM Reprints ISBA 2010029, Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA).
    10. A. B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon, 1982. "The Comparison of Multi-Dimensioned Distributions of Economic Status," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(2), pages 183-201.
    11. Anthony F. Shorrocks, 2004. "Inequality and Welfare Evaluation of Heterogeneous Income Distributions," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-01, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Muller, Christophe & Trannoy, Alain, 2011. "A dominance approach to the appraisal of the distribution of well-being across countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 239-246.
    13. Louis Eeckhoudt & Béatrice Rey & Harris Schlesinger, 2007. "A Good Sign for Multivariate Risk Taking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(1), pages 117-124, January.
    14. Christine Chambaz & Eric Maurin, 1998. "Atkinson And Bourguignon'S Dominance Criteria: Extended And Applied To The Measurement Of Poverty In France," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 44(4), pages 497-513, December.
    15. Denuit, Michel & Mesfioui, Mhamed, 2010. "Generalized increasing convex and directionally convex orders," LIDAM Discussion Papers ISBA 2010012, Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA).
    16. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    17. Lambert, Peter J & Ramos, Xavier, 2002. "Welfare Comparisons: Sequential Procedures for Heterogeneous Populations," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 69(276), pages 549-562, November.
    18. Bourguignon, Francois, 1989. "Family size and social utility : Income distribution dominance criteria," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 67-80, September.
    19. A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), 2000. "Handbook of Income Distribution," Handbook of Income Distribution, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    20. Jenkins, Stephen P & Lambert, Peter J, 1993. "Ranking Income Distributions When Needs Differ," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 39(4), pages 337-356, December.
    21. Peter C. Fishburn & Irving H. Lavalle, 1995. "Stochastic Dominance on Unidimensional Grids," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 513-525, August.
    22. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1983. "Ranking Income Distributions," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 50(197), pages 3-17, February.
    23. Serge-Christophe Kolm, 1977. "Multidimensional Egalitarianisms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(1), pages 1-13.
    24. Udo Ebert, 1999. "Using equivalent income of equivalent adults to rank income distributions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 16(2), pages 233-258.
    25. Denuit, Michel & Lefevre, Claude & Mesfioui, M'hamed, 1999. "A class of bivariate stochastic orderings, with applications in actuarial sciences," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 31-50, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Moyes, Patrick, 2013. "Rearrangements and sequential rank order dominance," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 278-290.
    2. Christoph Heinzel, 2014. "Term structure of discount rates under multivariate s-ordered consumption growth," Working Papers SMART 14-01, INRAE UMR SMART.
    3. Gajdos, Thibault & Weymark, John A., 2012. "Introduction to inequality and risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1313-1330.
    4. Christophe Muller & Asha Kannan & Roland Alcindor, 2016. "Multidimensional Poverty in Seychelles," AMSE Working Papers 1601, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised Jan 2016.
    5. FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2011. "Equity in health and health care," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011026, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    6. Christophe Muller, 2019. "Social Shock Sharing and Stochastic Dominance," AMSE Working Papers 1903, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    7. Nicholas Rohde & Ross Guest, 2018. "Multidimensional Inequality Across Three Developed Countries," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(3), pages 576-591, September.
    8. Christophe Muller & Alain Trannoy, 2003. "A Dominance Approach to Well-Being Inequality across Countries," IDEP Working Papers 0313, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France.
    9. Nicoleta Anca Matei & Claudio Zoli, 2012. "Restricted Finite Time Dominance," Working Papers 30/2012, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    10. Thi Kim Thanh Bui & Guido Erreygers, 2020. "Multidimensional Inequality in Vietnam, 2002–2012," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-31, April.
    11. Therese Nilsson, 2010. "Health, Wealth and Wisdom: Exploring Multidimensional Inequality in a Developing Country," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 95(2), pages 299-323, January.
    12. Francesco Andreoli & Claudio Zoli, 2020. "From unidimensional to multidimensional inequality: a review," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 78(1), pages 5-42, April.
    13. Mohamad A. Khaled & Paul Makdissi & D.S. Prasada Rao & Myra Yazbeck, 2023. "A unidimensional representation of multidimensional inequality, with an application to the Arab region," Discussion Papers Series 659, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    14. Mathews, Timothy & Schwartz, Jesse A., 2019. "Comparisons of utility inequality and income inequality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 18-20.
    15. Nicholas Rohde & Ross Guest, 2013. "Multidimensional Racial Inequality in the United States," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 591-605, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christophe Muller, 2019. "Social Shock Sharing and Stochastic Dominance," AMSE Working Papers 1903, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    2. Nicolas Gravel & Patrick Moyes, 2013. "Utilitarianism or welfarism: does it make a difference?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(2), pages 529-551, February.
    3. Moyes, Patrick, 2012. "Comparisons of heterogeneous distributions and dominance criteria," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1351-1383.
    4. Ooghe, Erwin & Lambert, Peter, 2006. "On bounded dominance criteria," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 15-30, July.
    5. Ooghe, Erwin, 2007. "Sequential dominance and weighted utilitarianism," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 208-212, February.
    6. Peter J. Lambert & Xavier Ramos, 2001. "Welfare comparisons: sequential procedures for heterogenous population," Working Papers wp0114, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    7. Fleurbaey, Marc & Hagnere, Cyrille & Trannoy, Alain, 2003. "Welfare comparisons with bounded equivalence scales," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 309-336, June.
    8. Francesco Andreoli & Claudio Zoli, 2020. "From unidimensional to multidimensional inequality: a review," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 78(1), pages 5-42, April.
    9. Gravel, Nicolas & Moyes, Patrick, 2012. "Ethically robust comparisons of bidimensional distributions with an ordinal attribute," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1384-1426.
    10. Flaviana Palmisano & Ida Petrillo, 2022. "A general rank‐dependent approach for distributional comparisons," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 24(2), pages 380-409, April.
    11. Fleurbaey, Marc & Hagneré, Cyrille & Trannoy, Alain, 2014. "Welfare comparisons of income distributions and family size: An individualistic approach," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 12-27.
    12. Flaviana Palmisano & Ida Petrillo, 2021. "A general rank-dependent approach for distributional comparisons," Working Papers 567, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    13. repec:zbw:hohpro:331 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Udo Ebert, 2011. "The redistribution of income when needs differ," Working Papers V-331-11, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2011.
    15. repec:old:wpaper:331 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Christophe Muller & Alain Trannoy, 2003. "A Dominance Approach to Well-Being Inequality across Countries," IDEP Working Papers 0313, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France.
    17. Claudio Zoli & Peter Lambert, 2012. "Sequential procedures for poverty gap dominance," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(2), pages 649-673, July.
    18. Gajdos, Thibault & Weymark, John A., 2012. "Introduction to inequality and risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1313-1330.
    19. Christoph Heinzel, 2014. "Term structure of discount rates under multivariate s-ordered consumption growth," Working Papers SMART 14-01, INRAE UMR SMART.
    20. Udo Ebert, 2010. "Dominance criteria for welfare comparisons: using equivalent income to describe differences in needs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(1), pages 55-67, July.
    21. Olivier Bargain, 2017. "Welfare analysis and redistributive policies," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(4), pages 393-419, December.
    22. Nicolas Gravel & Patrick Moyes, 2011. "Bidimensional Inequalities with an Ordinal Variable," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: Marc Fleurbaey & Maurice Salles & John A. Weymark (ed.), Social Ethics and Normative Economics, pages 101-127, Springer.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Multidimensional welfare; Compensation; Dominance; Lorenz criterion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    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:eee:jetheo:v:147:y:2012:i:4:p:1427-1449. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622869 .

    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.