The purpose of this paper is to propose and justify the use of a few measures of inequality for summarizing the basic information provided by the Lorenz curve. By exploiting the fact that the Lorenz curve can be considered analogous to a cumulative distribution function it is demonstrated that...

<Para ID="Par1">To gauge inequality in living standards, the distribution of lifetime income is likely to be more relevant than the distribution of current income. Yet, empirical studies of income inequality are typically based on observations of income for one or a few years. In this paper, we exploit a unique...</para>