This paper proposes a method for detecting income classes based on the change-point problem. There is an increasing demand for such a method in the literature. Computation of polarization indices requires a pre-grouping of the incomes. Similarly, indices of social exclusion and sometimes indices...

This paper explores the determinants of individual well-being as measured by self-reported levels of satisfaction with income. Making full use of the panel data nature of the German Socio-Economic Panel, we provide empirical evidence for well-being depending on absolute and on relative levels of...

Given any income distribution, to each income we associate a subgroup containing all persons whose incomes are not higher than this income and a person's target shortfall in a subgroup is the gap between the subgroup highest income and his own income. We then develop an absolute target shortfall...

Social exclusion manifests itself in the persistent relative lack of an individual's access to functionings compared with other members of society, and we model it as being in a state of deprivation over time. We view deprivation as having two basic determinants: the lack of identification with...

This paper considers an intermediate notion of polarization which is defined as a convex mix of relative and absolute concepts of polarization. While absolute polarization indices remain unchanged under equal absolute augmentation in all incomes, relative indices do not change under...

This paper presents a non-parametric procedure to analyze the effects of different factors on observed movements in any distribution. These effects are estimated by applying kernel density methods to weighted samples in order to obtain counterfactual distributions. The advantage of this approach...

We introduce and axiomatize a one-parameter class of individual deprivation measures. Motivated by a suggestion of Runciman, we modify Yitzhaki’s index by multiplying it by a function that is interpreted as measuring the part of deprivation generated by an agent’s observation that others in...

We introduce a one-parameter class of individual deprivation measures. Motivated by a suggestion of Runciman, we modify Yitzhaki’s index by multiplying it by a function that is interpreted as measuring the part of deprivation generated by an agent’s observation that others in his reference...