Journal Article On the Estimation of Income Inequality Measures from Grouped Observations Get access Nanak Kakwani Nanak Kakwani University of New South Wales Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 43, Issue 3, October 1976, Pages 483–492, https://doi.org/10.2307/2297227 Published: 01 October 1976 Article history Received: 01 March 1974 Accepted: 01 October 1975 Published: 01 October 1976

[This paper provides a generalization of Sen's poverty measure. The generalization is motivated by the failure of Sen's poverty measure to satisfy some transfer-sensitivity axioms proposed in this paper. A numerical method of computing the alternative poverty measures is provided along with an illustration based on the data from the Australian household expenditure survey carried out during 1974.]

This paper is concerned with the measurement of aggregate growth rates, where the aggregation is over time. The paper demonstrates that any mechanical procedures for computing aggregate growth rate has welfare implications, and value judgments implicit in various commonly used procedures are not appealing. A new procedure suggested in the paper captures all the essential properties of a welfare function. The methodology of the paper is applied to an analysis of growth rates of per capita GNP of 83 developing countries during the 1970–1987 period.

Several poverty indices have been suggested to measure the intensity of poverty suffered by those below the poverty line. Because the indices are estimated on the basis of sample observations, we need to test whether the observed differences in their values are statistically significant. This paper provides distribution-free asymptotic confidence intervals and statistical inference for additive poverty indices. The methodology developed in the paper is applied to analyze poverty in Cote d'Ivoire from the data of the Living Standards Survey, 1985.

We propose a procedure for measuring the effect of systematic discrimination in the income tax. Different socioeconomic groups are assumed to face different tax schedules. We show that a welfare loss is caused by the group specificity of schedules, the dollar value of which is our measure of discrimination. Defining vertical equity as the dollar value of the tax system's welfare superiority over an equal yield flat tax, discrimination equates to a loss in vertical equity. The Australian income tax is found to discriminate against wage and salary earners, causing a roughly 1% loss of social welfare in 1984.