The Social Welfare Function (SWF) is a decision rule to rank alternative social states in a complete fashion in terms of social welfare. This paper questions the philosophy of Paretian Principle as a desirable property of the SWF. It shows that it is possible to generalize the widely used Sen...

It is easy to demonstrate that Sen's SWF satisfies Pareto criteria. This paper questions the philosophy of this concept and shows that it is possible to formulate a generalized SWF, which can be non-Paretian under special circumstances. This paper also demonstrates a method of decomposition of...

This paper examines the changes in social welfare in Singapore using Labour Force Survey data. To study the changes and dominance, both ordinal and cardinal measures are used. By Lorenz Dominance social welfare in Singapore during 1999 is less than in 1991 while unambiguous conclusion cannot be...

Using data from the China Statistical Yearbook, trends in income inequality for urban and rural China are studied. According to our estimates, the overall Gini for China increased from 1980/81 to 2008. The rural Gini increased at an exponential rate of 1.2% while the urban Gini rose at a rate of...

1. Introduction -- 2. Income inequality : a general discussion -- 3. Income inequality trends in Singapore -- 4. Educational development and income inequality -- 5. Income differences : the gender dimension -- 6. Inequality, older women and necessity for social security -- 7. Trend in equity and...