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Local Segregation and Well‐Being
Author(s) -
AlonsoVillar Olga,
Del Río Coral
Publication year - 2017
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.12224
Subject(s) - ceteris paribus , economics , wage , welfare , zero (linguistics) , labour economics , phenomenon , demographic economics , occupational segregation , econometrics , microeconomics , market economy , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
This paper deals with the quantification of the well‐being loss/gain of a demographic group associated with its occupational segregation, an issue that has not been formally tackled in the literature. For this purpose, this paper proposes several properties to take into account when measuring this phenomenon. Building on standard assumptions of social welfare functions, it also defines and characterizes a parameterized family of indices that satisfy those properties. In particular, the indices are equal to zero when either the group has no segregation or all occupations have the same wage, and the indices increase when individuals of the group move into occupations that have higher wages than those left behind. In addition, ceteris paribus , the indices increase more the lower the wage is of the occupation left behind, and consider small improvements for many people to be more important than large improvements for a few.