On analysing the world distribution of income

Anthony Atkinson and Andrea Brandolini

No 701, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: This paper argues that consideration of world inequality should cause us to re-examine the key concepts underlying the welfare approach to the measurement of income inequality and the inter-relation between the measurement of inequality and the measurement of poverty. There are three reasons why we feel that a re-examination is necessary: (i) the extent of global income differences means that we cannot simply carry over the methods used at a national level; we need a more flexible measure; (ii) we have to reconcile measures of world inequality and world poverty; and (iii) we need to explore more fully the different ways in which measures may be relative or absolute. This leads us to propose a new measure, which (a) combines poverty and inequality, including provision for those who are concerned only with poverty, (b) incorporates different approaches to the measurement of inequality; and (c) allows the cost of inequality to be expressed in different ways. Applied to the world distribution for the period 1820-1992, the new measure provides different perspectives on the evolution of global inequality.

Keywords: global income inequality; absolute vs. relative inequality; poverty; world citizens (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C80 D31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: On Analyzing the World Distribution of Income (2010)
Working Paper: On analysing the world distribution of income (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_701_09

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