This book started life during a conversation at the LSE in the late 1980s. One author suggested to the other the shocking thought that the standard approach to the study of economic inequality and income distribution might be all wrong. Somehow this led to an even more shocking thought: that we might investigate whether this was so by asking other people, lots of them. This led to a full-scale research project which resulted in a number of papers (see Amiel and Cowell, 1992, 1994a, 1994b, 1995, 1996, 1997a, 1997b, 1998a, 1999) and finally to this volume which draws together the main results of the research project. The number of people to whom we have become indebted in the course of preparing this book is enormous. First, our thanks go to Hayka Amiel who started the thought running that eventually led to the research for this book (see chapter 1 for this story). We would also like to acknowledge the input of Avraham Polovin, who has collaborated with us in our related work on risk, and of Eytan Sheshinski, who acted as joint supervisor (with Frank Cowell) of Yoram Amiel's Ph.D. thesis; some of the ideas which have been developed in this book had their origin in Yoram's thesis.