Economic inequality and group welfare c.1
- Oxford Clarendon Press 1982
- 179 p.
Recent developments in the theories of real income, inequality, and poverty have opened up new avenues for social welfare comparison. The present study explores some of these avenues in the realms of both theory and practice. The framework of analysis used is the so-called named goods' approach, in which the same commodity consumed by two different persons is treated as two named goods. This framework has recently been used in the theory of real national income to facili tate the incorporation of distributional value judgements. The present study has explored its potentiality as a general analytical device for social welfare comparison by using it in the context of inequality and poverty as well. Practical application of the welfare criteria so derived has been illustrated by comparing real income, inequality, and poverty in Bangladesh between the years 1963-4 and 1973-4.
This book has grown out of my doctoral dissertation carried out in the London School of Economics and Political Science during the years 1974-8. The empirical part has been almost completely redone for the purposes of this book by using more recent information. This largely explains the rather long gestation period between completion of the dissertation and its publication in the present form.
It will be apparent to the reader that I have incurred an enormous intellectual debt to my revered teacher Professor A. K. Sen in developing the ideas contained in this book. It is not only through his published writings that I have been taught and inspired. The very idea of under taking this research was suggested to me by him, and throughout the various stages of its preparation he went through the drafts with pains taking care, advised me, and saved me from numerous errors. Any in adequacy or errors that may still remain are of course my own respons ibility. I take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to him.