Traditional indices of bi-dimensional inequality and polarization were developed for cardinal variables and cannot be used to quantify dispersion in ordinal measures of socioeconomic status and health. This paper develops two approaches to the measurement of inequality and bi-polarization using...

Using data on food insecurity in Israel, this chapter suggests borrowing techniques from the literature on multidimensional poverty to measure food insecurity, a distinction being made between “nominal” and “real” food insecurity. Various counting techniques are then implemented,...

This chapter shows that the algorithm recently proposed to decompose the Foster and Wolfson bipolarization index by income sources (see Bárcena-Martin, Deutsch, & Silber, forthcoming ) may be extended to break down wage bipolarization by its determinants. The chapter gives an empirical...

Purpose – We propose applying Reardon's approach to the measurement of ordinal segregation to the study of inequality in life chances in the case of ordinal variables. We also propose additional measures of inequality in life chances in such a case. Methodology – We state the desirable...

A recent trend in the study of poverty is to consider a relative poverty line, one that is responsive to the nature of the income distribution. We develop an axiomatic approach to the determination of an amalgam poverty line. Given a reference income (e.g., the mean or the median), the amalgam...

Traditional indices of bi-dimensional inequality and polarization were developed for cardinal variables and cannot be used to quantify dispersion in ordinal measures of socioeconomic status and health. This chapter develops two approaches to the measurement of inequality and bi-polarization...

This paper proposes a generalized approach to the issue of decomposing inequality by population subgroups. This generalization uses the concept of Shapley value decomposition and takes into account the fact that either the between or the within groups inequality may be considered as residual...

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the sources of earnings dispersion between trainees and nontrainees. We stress three mechanisms by which investment in general training may affect wage inequality: directly via participation to a general training program and indirectly via the selection...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to analyze the changes that took place in occupational segregation by gender, nationality, and age in Switzerland during the period 1970–2000. Methodology – The paper starts by using correspondence analysis to detect changes in occupational segregation by...

This article axiomatically derives a class of numerical indices of integration (equality) in the distribution of different types of workers across occupations. The associated segregation (inequality) indices parallel one form of multidimensional generalized Gini inequality indices. A comparison...