Equivalence scales are typically designed for adjusting households' incomes for differences in size and composition. On the one hand, there is evidence that the way differences in needs across households are taken into account has a significant impact on the assessment of inequality in the...

When incorporating differences in household characteristics, the choice of equivalence scale can affect the ranking of income distributions. An alternative approach was pioneered by A.B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon (G.R. Feiwel (Ed.), Arrow and the Foundation of the Theory of Economic Policy,...

We provide a characterization of the generalised satisfaction - in our terminology nondeprivation - quasi-ordering introduced by S.R. Chakravarty (Keio Economic Studies 34 (1997), 17-32) for making welfare comparisons based on the absence of deprivation. We show that the non-deprivation...

Typical welfare and inequality measures are required to be Lorenz consistent which guarantees that inequality decreases and welfare increases as a result of a progressive transfer. We explore the implications for welfare and inequality measurement of substituting the weaker absolute...

The paper investigates the definition of equity-regarding poverty measures when there are different household types in the population. It derives the implications of a between-type regressive transfer principle for poverty measures, for the choice of poverty lines and for the measurement of...

The paper investigates how the income distribution affects the subjective well-being of society. Starting from the concept of a social welfare function defined on income distributions it assesses the preference for equality in European countries. It examines how mean income and the distribution...

Der vorliegende Band 'Wirtschaftsethische Perspektiven VIII' umfasst einen großen Teil der Arbeiten, die auf den Sitzungen des Ausschusses für Wirtschaftswissenschaften und Ethik des Vereins für Socialpolitik in Kassel (2004) und in Wittenberg (2005) vorgetragen worden sind. Dieser Ausschuss...

The paper investigates inequality reducing taxation for various inequality views. Using the general definition of an inequality concept (Ebert (2004)) corresponding definitions of Lorenz dominance, inequality reduction and measures of tax progression are provided. The framework allows us to...

The paper characterizes the class of weakly decomposable (aggregable) inequality measures which satisfy a new (weak) decomposition (and agregation) property. These measures can be decomposed into the sum of the usual within-group and a between-group term which is based on the inequality between...

This paper studies the influence of productivity, pollution sensitivity, and adaptive capacity on optimal mitigation and adaptation in a two country global pollution model. We investigate the effects of changes of these parameters on the allocation of emissions, adaptation expenditures, and...