On a Family of Achievement and Shortfall Inequality Indices

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Health Economics (United Kingdom)

Abstract

This paper identifies a family of absolute consistent inequality indices using a weakly decomposable postulate suggested by Ebert. Because one member employs an Atkinson type aggregation we refer to it as the Atkinson index of consistent inequality. A second member of this family parallels the Kolm index of inequality. Two innovative features of these indices are that no specific structure is imposed on the form of the index at the outset and no transformation of any existing index is considered to ensure consistency. Each of them regards an achievement distribution as equally unequal as the corresponding shortfall distribution. We apply these indices to study inequality in grip strength among 50+ year-old Europeans. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

First Page

1503

Last Page

1513

DOI

10.1002/hec.3256

Publication Date

12-1-2016

Comments

Open Access; Green Open Access

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