A social‐psychological reconstruction of Amartya Sen’s measures of inequality and social welfare
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21358010 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Oded Stark (0000-0001-5972-9726, University of Bonn Germany, corresponding author), Wiktor Budziński (0000-0001-9866-4267, University of Warsaw Poland) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 74 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 552-566 |
| Publication date | 2021-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Kyklos (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0023-5962 • E-ISSN: 1467-6435 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/kykl.12280 |
| OpenAlex | W3200385521 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 41 |
The Gini coefficient features prominently in Amartya Sen’s 1973 and 1997 seminal work on income inequality and social welfare. We construct the Gini coefficient from social‐psychological building blocks, reformulating it as a ratio between a measure of social stress and aggregate income. We determine when as a consequence of an income gain by an individual, an increase in the social stress measure dominates a concurrent increase in the aggregate income, such that the magnitude of the Gini coefficient increases. By integrating our approach to the construction of the Gini coefficient with Sen’s social welfare function, we are able to endow the function with a social‐psychological underpinning, showing that this function, too, is a composite of a measure of social stress and aggregate income. We reveal a dual role played by aggregate income as a booster of social welfare in Sen’s social welfare function. Quite surprisingly, we find that a marginal increase of income for any individual, regardless of the position of the individual in the hierarchy of incomes, improves welfare as measured by Sen’s social welfare function
Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economic inequality · Economics · Gini coefficient · Inequality · Labour economics · Market economy · Political science · Social position · Social Welfare · Social welfare function · Welfare · Economic theories and models · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Mathematics · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction · Social Work
Social Limits to Growth
Real National Income
Peer Effects with Random Assignment
Clean Evidence on Peer Effects
Income Inequality and Health
Does peer ability affect student achievement?
Health, income and relative deprivation
Relative Deprivation, Poor Health Habits, and Mortality
Peers at Work
Socioeconomic determinants of health
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Relative Deprivation
American Soldier
Relative Deprivation and the Gini Coefficient
Social Incentives in the Workplace
Relative Status and Well-Being
Income inequality and health
The origins of the Gini index
An adverse social welfare effect of a doubly gainful trade
Community cohesion and assimilation equilibria
Social Distance and Social Decisions
Why Inequality Makes Europeans Less Happy
Personal relative deprivation, delay discounting, and gambling
Social status and economic performance
Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility
Choice, Welfare and Measurement
Relative deprivation and suicide risk in South Korea
On Economic Inequality
The Association Between Income Inequality and Mental Health
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |