Modeling Income Distributions and Lorenz Curves

The parameterization of income distributions using Lorenz Curves is a useful technique to analyze the characteristics of income inequality within a given population. This book brings together classic papers in the field including cutting-edge contributions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in the Preface to his famous Discourse on Inequality that I consider the subject of the following discourse as one of the most interesting questions philosophy can propose, and unhappily for us, one of the most thorny that philosophers can have to solve. For how shall we know the source of inequality between men, if we do not begin by knowing mankind? (Rousseau, 1754). This citation of Rousseau appears in an article in Spanish where Dagum (2001), in the memory of whom this book is published, also cites Socrates who said that the only useful knowledge is that which makes us better and Seneca who wrote that knowing what a straight line is, is not important if we do not know what rectitude is. These references are indeed a good illustration of Dagum's vast knowledge, which was clearly not limited to the ?eld of Economics. For Camilo the ?rst part of Rousseau's citation certainly justi?ed his interest in the ?eld of inequality which was at the centre of his scienti?c preoccupations. It should however be stressed that for Camilo the second part of the citation represented a solid argument in favor of giving macroeconomic foundations to microeconomic behavior (Dagum, 2001). More precisely, individualism and methodological holism complete each other in contributing to the explanation of individual and social behavior (Dagum, 2001).

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Texte du rabat

The parameterization of income distributions and Lorenz Curves is a useful approach for representing how income is distributed within a given population. It provides a way of describing how the data are generated, why the level of inequality is what it is, and what happens to the poorer sections of the population. This book brings together classic papers in the field, including Camilo Dagum's most influential contribution, survey papers outlining the state-of-the-art of the field, and cutting-edge research contributions. While providing a thorough overview of the methodology of income distribution modeling, the book emphasizes its relevance on development economics and its importance for policy makers who design and assess poverty alleviation and income redistribution policies.

Contenu
Collection of influential papers.- A New Model of Personal Income Distribution: Specification and Estimation.- A Function for Size Distribution of Incomes.- Some Generalized Functions for the Size Distribution of Income.- Efficient Estimation of the Lorenz Curve and Associated Inequality Measures from Grouped Observations.- Distribution and Mobility of Wealth of Nations.- Survey papers on Lorenz functions and the generalizations and extensions of income distributions.- A Guide to the Dagum Distributions.- Pareto and Generalized Pareto Distributions.- The Generalized Beta Distribution as a Model for the Distribution of Income: Estimation of Related Measures of Inequality.- Parametric Lorenz Curves: Models and Applications.- Current research.- Maximum Entropy Estimation of Income Distributions from Bonferroni Indices.- New Four- and Five-Parameter Models for Income Distributions.- Fuzzy Monetary Poverty Measures under a Dagum Income Distributive Hypothesis.- Modelling Lorenz Curves: Robust and Semi-parametric Issues.- Modelling Inequality with a Single Parameter.- Lorenz Curves and Generalised Entropy Inequality Measures.- Estimating Income Distributions Using a Mixture of Gamma Densities.- Inequality in Multidimensional Indicators of Well-Being: Methodology and Application to the Human Development Index.