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Inequality, Welfare And Poverty: Three Interrelated Phenomena

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Handbook of Income Inequality Measurement

Part of the book series: Recent Economic Thought Series ((RETH,volume 71))

Abstract

Sen (1973), in the preface of his book on economic inequality, points out that the idea of inequality is both very simple and very complex. It is simple if it is defined merely as the dispersion of a frequency distribution. But then there exist several measures of dispersion which can result in contradictory conclusions about the relative merits of income distributions. The pure statistical approach to measuring inequality is of little help in deciding if one income distribution is more or less equal than another.

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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Kakwani, N. (1999). Inequality, Welfare And Poverty: Three Interrelated Phenomena. In: Silber, J. (eds) Handbook of Income Inequality Measurement. Recent Economic Thought Series, vol 71. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4413-1_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4413-1_21

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-5897-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-4413-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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