Households can differ in size and needs. A reliable assessment of inequality in living standards, therefore, necessitates the conversion of the original heterogeneous into an artificial quasi-homogeneous population. Ebert and Moyes (2003) and Shorrocks (2004) theoretically explore the properties...

This paper proposes a definition of equality of educational opportunities. Then, it develops a comprehensive model that allows to test for the existence of equality of opportunity in a given distribution and to rank distributions according to equality of opportunity. Finally, it provides an...

The March Current Population Survey (CPS) is the primary data source for estimation of levels and trends in labor earnings and income inequality in the USA. Time-inconsistency problems related to top coding in theses data have led many researchers to use the ratio of the 90th and 10th...

Evidence of an increase in inequality since the 1970s has motivated research on its relationship to growth and development. The findings of that research are contradictory and inconclusive. One source of these divergent results is that researchers rely on different group measures of inequality....

This paper analyzes the relationship between income inequality and inequality of opportunities for income acquisition in nine developed countries during the nineties. We develop a new definition of equality of opportunity and show how it can be implemented empirically. Equality of opportunity is...

In the unidimensional setting, the well known Pigou-Dalton transfer principle is the basic axiom to order distribution in terms of inequality. This axiom has a number of generalizations to the multidimensional approach which have been used to derive multidimensional inequality measures. However,...

Numerical modelling of the personal income distribution (PID) in the USA from 1950 to 2003 is accomplished based on a microeconomic model for the personal income evolution. It is shown that the overall PID demonstrates the existence of some fixed hierarchical income distribution structure in the...

This paper discusses asymptotic and bootstrap inference methods for a set of inequality and progressivity indices. The application of non-degenerate U-statistics theory is described, particularly through the derivation of the Suits-progressivity index distribution. We have also provided formulae...

This paper analyses the contribution of capital income to income inequality in a cross-national comparison. Using micro-data from the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) for three prominent panel studies, namely the BHPS for Great Britain, the SOEP for West Germany, and the PSID for the USA, a...

The two largest minorities in the United States, African Americans and people of Hispanic origin, show official poverty rates that are at least twice as high as those among non-Hispanic Whites. These similarly high poverty rates among minorities are, however, the result of different combinations...