Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What is inequality? The economists' view
- 3 An investigative strategy
- 4 What is inequality? The students' view
- 5 Income and welfare
- 6 Income change
- 7 Poverty
- 8 A cross-cultural perspective
- 9 Thinking again about inequality
- Appendix A Inequality analysis: a summary of concepts and results
- Appendix B The questionnaires
- References
- Index
9 - Thinking again about inequality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What is inequality? The economists' view
- 3 An investigative strategy
- 4 What is inequality? The students' view
- 5 Income and welfare
- 6 Income change
- 7 Poverty
- 8 A cross-cultural perspective
- 9 Thinking again about inequality
- Appendix A Inequality analysis: a summary of concepts and results
- Appendix B The questionnaires
- References
- Index
Summary
Second thoughts about second thoughts
Why is thinking about inequality so necessary? Why is thinking about economic inequality so necessary? The short answer is that analysing wealth and income distributions in terms of inequality, social welfare or poverty is essentially different from the idea of inequality in other contexts and other subjects. As Dalton (1920, p. 348) remarked:
An American writer has expressed the view that ‘the statistical problem before the economist in determining upon a measure of the inequality in the distribution of wealth is identical with that of the biologist in determining upon a measure of the inequality in the distribution of any physical characteristic’ [Persons 1908]. But this is clearly wrong. For the economist is primarily interested, not in the distribution of income as such, but in the effects of the distribution of income upon the distribution and total amount of economic welfare, which may be derived from that income.
Thinking about inequality is essential because the main ideas of inequality require detailed assumptions if they are to be made workable. Even if the idea of economic equality were to be based upon an agreed set of ethical principles or some widely accepted mathematical axioms about the meaning of distributional comparisons, there would remain a problem. As in other fields of study there is, of course, a question of where the agreed set of principles or the accepted axioms come from.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thinking about InequalityPersonal Judgment and Income Distributions, pp. 127 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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