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To Each the Same and to Each his Own: A Proposal to Measure Responsibility‐Sensitive Income Inequality
Author(s) -
DEVOOGHT KURT
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
economica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.532
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1468-0335
pISSN - 0013-0427
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0335.2007.00602.x
Subject(s) - egalitarianism , inequality , axiom , income inequality metrics , measure (data warehouse) , income distribution , norm (philosophy) , economic inequality , offensive , economics , axiomatic system , econometrics , mathematical economics , distribution (mathematics) , welfare economics , mathematics , public economics , computer science , political science , mathematical analysis , geometry , management , database , politics , law
This paper deals with the question of how to incorporate modern responsibility‐catering egalitarianism into economic theory on the measurement of income inequality. I present a particular axiomatic expression of the main aspects of such egalitarianism. Then, to measure offensive inequality separately I construct a norm or reference income distribution based upon the axiomatic model to replace the perfectly equal income distribution that is used as norm by all common inequality measures. I defend the use of a particular measure of distributional change to determine the degree of offensive inequality, and apply the method to Belgian income data.