Journal
JOURNAL OF HEALTH ECONOMICS
Volume 31, Issue 4, Pages 578-583Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.02.006
Keywords
Inequality measurement; Health inequality; Achievements; Shortfalls
Funding
- Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia [SEJ2009-11213]
- FEDER
- Basque Government [GIC07/146-IT-377-07]
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In several economic fields, such as those related to health or education, the individuals' characteristics are measured by bounded variables. Accordingly, these characteristics may be indistinctly represented by achievements or shortfalls. A difficulty arises when inequality needs to be assessed. One may focus either on achievements or on shortfalls but the respective inequality rankings may lead to contradictory results. In this note we propose a procedure to define indicators that measure equally the achievement and shortfall inequality. Specifically, we derive measures which are invariant under ratio-scale or translation transformations, and a decomposable measure is also obtained. As the indicators proposed depend on the distribution bounds, families of indices that guarantee the same inequality rankings regardless of the distribution maximal levels are identified. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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