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Accounting For Inequality: A Proposed Revision Of The Human Development Index, Elizabeth Stanton
Accounting For Inequality: A Proposed Revision Of The Human Development Index, Elizabeth Stanton
PERI Working Papers
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a country-level measure of social welfare based on national values for average life expectancy, rates of adult literacy and school enrollment, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Since HDI is based entirely on national averages it can provide only limited information about distribution within countries. The distribution of access to key resources is an important determinant of the effect of health, education and income on both individual well-being and on the aggregate well-being of a population as a whole. This paper makes a case for the importance of inequality to measuring social welfare; …
Relative Advantage, Queue Jumping, And Welfare Maximizing Weath Distribution, Alex Coram, Lyle Noakes
Relative Advantage, Queue Jumping, And Welfare Maximizing Weath Distribution, Alex Coram, Lyle Noakes
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Suppose individuals get utilities from the total amount of wealth they hold and from their wealth relative to those immediately below them. This paper studies the distribution of wealth that maximizes an additive welfare function made up of these utilities. It interprets wealth distribution in a control theory framework to show that the welfare maximizing distribution may have unexpected properties. In some circumstances it requires that inequality be maximized at the poorest and richest ends of the distribution. In other circumstances it requires that all wealth be given to a single individual.