A well-known criterion to make heterogeneous welfare comparisons is Atkinson and Bourguignon’s (1987) sequential generalized Lorenz dominance (SGLD) criterion. Recently, Fleurbaey, Hagneré and Trannoy (2003) convincingly argue that it contains unreasonable household utility profiles and...

The decomposition of the redistributive effect of an income tax into vertical, horizontal and reranking contributions according to the model of Aronson, Johnson and Lambert (1994), henceforth AJL, is revisited. When close equals groups are used, rather than the exact equals groups upon which the...

We examine the effect on inequality of increasing one income, and show that for two wide classes of indices a benchmark income level or position exists, dividing upper from lower incomes, such that if a lower income is raised, inequality falls, and if an upper income is raised, inequality rises....

The analysis contrasts results of two recently expounded micro-level data approaches to derive robust intertemporal characterizations of redistributional effects of income tax schedules; the fixed-income procedure of Kasten, Sammartino and Toder (1994) and the transplant-and-compare method of...

What does an equal sacrifice tax look like in the case of a rank-dependent social welfare function? One's tax liability evidently becomes a function of one's income and one's position in the distribution in such a case, but not much else appears to be known. (Menahem Yaari touched upon the issue...

We revisit the well-known decomposition of the Gini coefficient into between-groups, within-groups and overlap terms in the context of two groups in which the incomes in one group may be scaled and that groupÂ’s population weight modified. In this more general setting than usual, we focus on...

Using recently developed indices of fractionalization and polarization, we analyze the direct and indirect effects of ethnic and religious heterogeneity on income inequality and on welfare programs across US states. We find strong evidence (1) that there is a positive relationship between ethnic...

Current poverty measurement methodology does not allow a definitive analysis of changes in distribution, through time or between countries, which involve changes in the number or proportion of poor people. By re-opening some of the discussion which has taken place around the incidence, intensity...

Poverty reduction has become a fundamental objective of development, and therefore a metric for assessing the effectiveness of various interventions. Economic growth can be a powerful instrument of income poverty reduction. This creates a need for meaningful ways of assessing the poverty impact...

In this study we derive measures of the redistributive effect of taxes and welfare expenditures for the U.S. using CPS data for the years 1994, 1999 and 2004. We find that whilst income inequality increased, the redistributive effect of taxes and public transfers together reduced market income...