Temkin (1986,1993) sets out a philosophical basis for the analysis of income inequality that provides an important alternative to the mainstream welfarist approach. We show that the Temkin principles can be characterised by a parsimonious axiomatic structure and we use this structure to derive a...

The paper presents an abstract definition of linear inequality concepts leading to linearly invariant inequality measures and characterizes the class of linear concepts completely. Two general methods of deriving ethical measures are proposed. They imply an Atkinson-Kolm-Sen index and a new dual...