IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/edn/esedps/174.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inequality Measures as Tests of Fairness in an Economy

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Standard measures of inequality have been criticized for a long time on the grounds that they are snap shot measures which do not take into account the process generating the observed distribution. Rather than focusing on outcomes, it is argued, we should be interested in whether the underlying process is "fair". Following this line of argument, this paper develops statistical tests for fairness within a well defined income distribution generating process and a well specified notion of "fairness". We find that standard test procedures, such as LR, LM and Wald, lead to test statistics which are closely related to standard measures of inequality. The answer to the "process versus outcomes" critique is thus not to stop calculating inequality measures, but to interpret their values differently - to compare them to critical values for a test of the null hypothesis of fairness.

Suggested Citation

  • Ravi Kanbur & Stuart Sayer & Andy Snell, 2007. "Inequality Measures as Tests of Fairness in an Economy," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 174, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    • Handle: RePEc:edn:esedps:174
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.ed.ac.uk/papers/id174_esedps.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Baker & Gary Solon, 2003. "Earnings Dynamics and Inequality among Canadian Men, 1976-1992: Evidence from Longitudinal Income Tax Records," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 267-288, April.
    2. Steven Haider & Gary Solon, 2006. "Life-Cycle Variation in the Association between Current and Lifetime Earnings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1308-1320, September.
    3. Sugden, Robert, 1993. "Welfare, Resources, and Capabilities: A Review [Inequality Reexamined]," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1947-1962, December.
    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. Nicholas Rohde, 2016. "J-divergence measurements of economic inequality," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 179(3), pages 847-870, June.

    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. Chen, Wen-Hao & Ostrovsky, Yuri & Piraino, Patrizio, 2017. "Lifecycle variation, errors-in-variables bias and nonlinearities in intergenerational income transmission: new evidence from Canada," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-12.
    2. Charles M. Beach & Ross Finnie & David Gray, 2010. "Long‐Run Inequality And Short‐Run Instability Of Men'S And Women'S Earnings In Canada," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(3), pages 572-596, September.
    3. Brenner, Jan, 2010. "Life-cycle variations in the association between current and lifetime earnings: Evidence for German natives and guest workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 392-406, April.
    4. Meghir, Costas & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2011. "Earnings, Consumption and Life Cycle Choices," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 9, pages 773-854, Elsevier.
    5. Bhashkar Mazumder, 2018. "Intergenerational Mobility in the United States: What We Have Learned from the PSID," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 680(1), pages 213-234, November.
    6. Stéphane Bonhomme & Jean-Marc Robin, 2009. "Assessing the Equalizing Force of Mobility Using Short Panels: France, 1990-2000," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 63-92.
    7. Rolf Aaberge & Magne Mogstad, 2015. "Inequality in current and lifetime income," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(2), pages 217-230, February.
    8. Doan, Quang Hung & Nguyen, Ngoc Anh, 2016. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in Vietnam," MPRA Paper 70603, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Xu Sun & Xiaolu Lei & Baisen Liu, 2021. "Mobility Divergence in China? Complete Comparisons of Social Class Mobility and Income Mobility," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(2), pages 687-709, January.
    10. Necker, Sarah & Voskort, Andrea, 2014. "Intergenerational transmission of risk attitudes – A revealed preference approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 66-89.
    11. Paul Bingley & Lorenzo Cappellari, 2019. "Correlation of Brothers' Earnings and Intergenerational Transmission," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 370-383, May.
    12. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Jäntti, Markus, 2013. "Income mobility," ISER Working Paper Series 2013-23, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    13. Robert Lucas & Sari Kerr, 2013. "Intergenerational income immobility in Finland: contrasting roles for parental earnings and family income," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(3), pages 1057-1094, July.
    14. Jan Brenner, 2009. "Life-Cycle Variations in the Association between Current and Lifetime Earnings – Evidence for German Natives and Guest Workers," Ruhr Economic Papers 0095, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    15. Chelsea Murray & Robert Graham Clark & Silvia Mendolia & Peter Siminski, 2018. "Direct Measures of Intergenerational Income Mobility for Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 94(307), pages 445-468, December.
    16. Nizam Melikşah Demirtaş & Orhan Torul, 2024. "Intergenerational income mobility in Turkey," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 22(1), pages 185-209, March.
    17. Adalbert Mayer, 2010. "The evolution of wages over the lifecycle: insights from intergenerational connections," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(22), pages 2817-2833.
    18. repec:zbw:rwirep:0095 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Sam Schulhofer-Wohl & Andriy Norets, 2009. "Heterogeneity in income processes," 2009 Meeting Papers 999, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & John Laitner & Jae Song & Dmitriy Stolyarov, 2013. "Technological Progress and the Earnings of Older Workers," Working Papers wp280, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    21. Nilsen, Øivind Anti & Vaage, Kjell & Aakvik, Arild & Jacobsen, Karl, 2008. "Estimates of Intergenerational Elasticities Based on Lifetime Earnings," IZA Discussion Papers 3709, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:edn:esedps:174. 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: Research Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deediuk.html .

    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.