Offering an overview of the main questions that have to be addressed explicitly or implicitly when making income inequality comparisons, this volume offers a historical survey of the link between the personal and functional distributions of incomes. It also reviews specific issues in and applications of income inequality analysis.

The subjects covered are the decomposition of inequality by income sources and population subgroups, the use of equivalence scales, multidimensional inequality, income tax progressivity, life-time income inequality, income mobility and the interrelations between inequality, welfare and poverty.

Forword
A. Sen. Introduction: Thirty Years of Intensive Research on Income Inequality
J. Silber. Acknowledgment. 1. The Rational Foundations of Income Inequality Measurement
S.-C. Kolm. 2. Linking the Functional and Personal Distributions of Income
C. Dagum. 3. Income Inequality Measurement: The Normative Approach
C. Blackorby, et al. 4. Measuring Inequality: The Axiomatic Approach
S.R. Chakravarty. 5. The Mathematical Foundations of Inequality Analysis
M. Le Breton. 6. Stochastic Dominance and the Lorenz Curve
P. Moyes. 7. The Measurement of Income Inequality: The Subjective Approach
Y. Amiel. 8. Income Inequality Measurement: The Statistical Approach
G.M. Giorgi. 9. Estimation of Inequality Indices
F.A. Cowell. 10. Parametric Approximations of the Lorenz Curve
H.K. Ryu, D.J. Slottje. 11. Tests of Significance for Lorenz Partial Orders
J.A. Bishop, J.P. Formby. 12. How Do Income Sources Affect Income Inequality? R.I. Lerman. 13. Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups and the Analysis of Interdistributional Inequality
J. Deutsch, J. Silber. 14. Equivalence Scales and Inequality
F.A. Cowell, M. Mercader-Prats. 15. Multidimensioned Approaches to Welfare Analysis
E. Maasoumi. 16. Redistributional Effect of Progressive Income Taxes
P.J. Lambert. 17. Lifetime versus Annual Income Distribution
J. Creedy. 18. Horizontal Inequity Measurement: A Basic Reassessment
S.P. Jenkings, P.J. Lambert. 19. The Measurement of Income Mobility: An Introduction to the Literature
G.S. Fields, E.A. Ok. 20. Inequality, Welfare and Poverty: Three Interrelated Phenomena
N. Kakwani. Epilogue: Relfections on Income Inequality Measurement
A.B. Atkinson.