To date, inequality orderings for ordered response data are only suitable for comparing distributions that share a common median state. In this paper we propose a methodology for comparing distributions irrespective of their medians. We set out to do so by introducing a general pre-ordering and...

We consider the problem of targeting benefits when the incomes of families are not accurately observable by the public authorities. By income uncertainty it is meant that the decision-maker cannot ascertain an applicant's income, but that he can assign probabilities with respect to the level of...

When health status is an ordered response variable, Allison and Foster (2004) postulate that a distribution Q exhibits more inequality than a distribution P if Q is obtained from P via a sequence of median preserving spreads. This paper introduces a parametric family of inequality...

Because self-reported health status [SRHS] is an ordered response variable, inequality measurement for SRHS data requires a numerical scale for converting individual responses into a summary statistic. The choice of scale is however problematic, since small variations in the numerical scale may...

An emerging literature in the field of income distribution suggests that inequality may persist in the long run. U.S. father and son income data extracted from the PSID support the hypothesis that the distribution of earnings of children raised in privileged environments welfare-dominates that...

We contrast two approaches to the prediction of latent variables in the model of factor analysis. The likelihood statistic constitutes the set of minimal sufficient statistics for the unobservables when sampling arises from the exponential family of distributions. Linear predictors on the other...

We provide, for the class of relative bidimensional inequality indices, a decomposition of inequality into two univariate Atkinson- Kolm-Sen indices and a third statistic which depends on the joint distribution of resources.

This paper explores the welfare effects of international subsidies designed to expedite the production of global public goods. It distinguishes between the impact subsidies exert on behaviour and the impact subsidies exert on welfare. Subsidies that encourage recipients to contribute to the...

Life-cycle theories emphasize the fact that consumption is allocated intertemporally, on the basis of a long-term concept of resources that differs from household income. Because life-cycle income is unobserved, the distribution of this variable cannot be recovered. It is shown that, within a...