Abstract
We explore the inequality measurement of a discrete ordinal variable between social groups. We provide an axiomatic characterization for the Net Difference Index (Lieberson: Sociol. Methodol. 7, 276–291 1976), that makes use of rank-domination to evaluate the discrepancy between the distributions of two social groups over ordered categories. Adapting well-known principles of cardinal inequality measurement to the between-group ordinal inequality setting, we show that the Net Difference Index mimics the Gini Index in terms of its relationship to the Lorenz curve, in our setting.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Miguel Angel Ballester, Ramses Abul Naga, Jorge Alcalde-Unzu, Salvador Barbera, Joan Maria Esteban, Marc Fleurbaey, Carmen Herrero, Jordi Masso, Debraj Ray, Pedro Rey-Biel and William Thompson for their helpful comments and suggestions. Financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through grant ECO2008-04756 and FEDER (Grupo Consolidado-C) is gratefully acknowledged.
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Cuhadaroglu, T. Evaluating ordinal inequalities between groups. J Econ Inequal 21, 219–231 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-022-09547-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-022-09547-5