Few studies have examined the dynamics of participation in welfare in Québec and elsewhere in Canada. This paper sheds some light on that important topic, which is crucial for the understanding of the features and of the effects of welfare programmes, and for the analysis of possible reforms....

L'utilité des courbes de Lorenz pour l'analyse de la répartition des revenus est bien connue depuis l'article influent d'Atkinson (1970). Nous indiquons dans le présent article comment l'usage combiné de ces courbes de Lorenz et des courbes de concentration des revenus, des impôts ou des...

We derive the asymptotic sampling distribution of various estimators frequently used to order distributions in terms of poverty, welfare and inequality. This includes estimators of most of the poverty indices currently in use, as well as estimators of the curves used to infer stochastic...

We propose a class of social evaluation functions and of inequality indices which merge the useful features of the family of Atkinson (1970) and of S-Gini (Donaldson and Weymark (1980, 1983), Yitzhaki (1983) and Kakwani (1980)) indices. These social evaluation functions can be interpreted as...

When comparing poverty across distributions, an analyst must select a poverty line to identify the poor, an equivalence scale to compare individuals from households of different compositions and sizes, and a poverty index to aggregate individual deprivation into an index of total poverty. A...

An indicator of the performance of a tax (and/or benefit) system in generating a high level of social welfare is proposed. Under standard assumptions on the form of the admissible social welfare functions, the indicator is shown to be increasing in the progressivity of the system. It is also...

A general class of progressivity indices is proposed which is consistent with the well-developed theory of the measurement of inequality and social welfare. In particular, we show that the more progressive a tax system, the more equal the distribution of net income and the greater the...

This paper develops criteria for a new concept of restricted inequality dominance and show how they relate to criteria for comparing relative poverty. The results warn against the use of some popular indices of inequality. They do, however, suggest an interesting extension of the Schutz...

Il est possible d'interpréter une classe d'indices d'iniquité horizontale comme représentant un regroupement de moyennes normatives de sentiments individuels de performance relative dans la distribution des taxes et des transferts. Un membre très connu de cette classe est l'indice...

A class of inequality measures that is a natural companion to the popular Lorenz curve is the class of measures that are linear in incomes. These measures, which include the Gini and S-Gini coefficients, can be interpreted as ethical means of relative deprivation feelings. Their change through...