INEQUALITY MEASURES

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to present ways to measure inequality. The article describes the last three ways to measure inequality, i.e. based on the Lorenz curve, generalized entropy and the social welfare function. It omits, however, the share and division measures, i.e. the absolute and relative differences, variance, quartile and standard deviations, or positional inequality measures based on percentiles, deciles, quartiles, quantiles, the coefficient of variation and the McLoone index, which results from the fact that although they are often used in empirical research, they illustrate division rather than inequality sensu stricto [i.a. Park 1984, pp. 42-44; Heshmati 2004; Jóźwiak, Podgórski 2012; Jabkowski 2009, pp. 32-35]. Thus, the article does not include a wider presentation of these measures.

Keywords

• inequality measures
• lorenz curve
• generalized entropy measures
• welfare function