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A Class of Social Welfare Functions That Depend on Mean Income and Income Polarization
Author(s) -
Rodríguez Juan Gabriel
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/roiw.12107
Subject(s) - economics , social welfare function , welfare , economic inequality , polarization (electrochemistry) , social welfare , inequality , income distribution , index (typography) , demographic economics , econometrics , public economics , mathematics , political science , computer science , market economy , mathematical analysis , chemistry , world wide web , law
A well‐established strategy for evaluating alternative income distributions is based on the use of an abbreviated social welfare function that depends only on mean income and an inequality index. In keeping with this literature, we study the existence of social welfare functions that can be written as a trade‐off between efficiency and income polarization. This paper proposes a class of social welfare functions consistent with the E steban and R ay, and Duclos, Esteban and Ray income polarization indices. For this result, we expand the domain for personal preferences to incorporate not only own income but also the well‐being of others. In addition, we link our proposal to the literature on relative satisfaction. The approach is illustrated by an empirical application using the CPS database for the U nited S tates in the period 1991–2010.