The paper defines the Gini index as the sum of individual contributions where individual contributions are interpreted as the degree of diversity of each individual from all other members of society. Among various possible forms of individual contributions to the Gini found in the literature, we...

This paper develops new decompositions of the redistributive, vertical and horizontal effects of the fiscal system, revealing the contributions of different tax and benefit instruments. This new methodology brings together two widely acknowledged approaches in the study of income inequality and...

In the paper, a combined approach is used to test for inequality differences of several well-being categories for a number of groups of persons. Hereby, total inequality is decomposed into within- and into between-group/category inequality (via a normalised coefficient of variation as the used...