This book uses welfare theoretic and descriptive approaches to present recent advances in the study of inequality, polarization and poverty. It is filled with graphs, charts, and non-technical explanations of technical terms and mathematical operations.

Given any income distribution, to each income we associate a subgroup containing all persons whose incomes are not higher than this income and a person's target shortfall in a subgroup is the gap between the subgroup highest income and his own income. We then develop an absolute target shortfall...