Relation Between a Social Welfare Function and the Gini Index of Income Inequality (vol 4, pg 98, 1972)

• 成果类型: Correction
• 署名作者: Stark, Oded
• 署名单位: University of Bonn; University of Warsaw
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2022.105543
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Social welfare function; Social welfare as a product of aggregate income and income equality; Dependence of social welfare on the lower income; A link to the Rawlsian social welfare function

摘要

Fifty years ago Eytan Sheshinski constructed a composite measure of social welfare in which income per capita enters positively, and income inequality enters negatively: social welfare was defined as a strictly increasing function of the product of income per capita and one minus the Gini coefficient. In the case of a population of two persons whose incomes are distinct, Sheshinski states that social welfare depends only on the lower income, which reduces the social welfare function to the Rawlsian social welfare function. We show that this is not true: social welfare depends on both incomes, and there is no congruence with the Rawlsian perspective. (c) 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc.