The goal of this paper is to characterize a measure of diversity among individuals, which we call generalized fractionalization index, that uses information on similarities among individuals. We show that the generalized index is a natural extension of the widely used ethno-linguistic...

We examine the measurement of individual poverty in an intertemporal context. In contrast to earlier contributions, we assign importance to the persistence in a state of poverty and we characterize a class of individual intertemporal poverty measures reflecting this feature. In addition, we...

An index of richness in a society is a measure of the extent of its affluence. This paper presents an analytical discussion on several indices of richness and their properties. It also develops criteria for ordering alternative distributions of income in terms of their richness. Given a line of...