IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/voj/journl/v62y2015i5p531-555id62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Integrated Approach for the Measurement of Inequality, Poverty, and Richness

Author

Listed:
  • Nuno Crespo
  • Sandrina B. Moreira
  • Nadia Simoes

Abstract

The goal of the paper is to propose a new and integrated approach to the measurement of inequality in income distribution, poverty, and richness. The proposed set of indicators is easy to calculate and is based on a neutral inequality concept. The method allows an objective interpretation of the values for each measure, a decomposition according to households’ characteristics, and an immediate comparison of the results between countries and time periods, thereby offering important conclusions for policy action. We illustrate the application of the measures with data from Portugal, finding that: (i) 17.78% of the individuals belong to households classified as poor while 7.03% are rich and 75.19% are classified as middle class; (ii) it is necessary to redistribute 23.78% of the total income of the economy to obtain perfect equality; (iii) 2.09% of the total income in the economy is enough to eradicate poverty. Key words: Income inequality, Poverty, Richness, Measurement.JEL: D30, D31.

Suggested Citation

  • Nuno Crespo & Sandrina B. Moreira & Nadia Simoes, 2015. "Integrated Approach for the Measurement of Inequality, Poverty, and Richness," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 62(5), pages 531-555.
    • Handle: RePEc:voj:journl:v:62:y:2015:i:5:p:531-555:id:62
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://panoeconomicus.org/index.php/jorunal/article/view/62/57
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income inequality; Poverty; Richness; Measurement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    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:voj:journl:v:62:y:2015:i:5:p:531-555:id:62. 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: Ivana Horvat (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://panoeconomicus.org/index.php/jorunal/ .

    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.