Utility-Oriented Simpson-Type Indexes and Inequality Measures

Abstract

Measures of economic inequality and poverty indexea are generally baaed on the Gini coefficient and some other measures of income inequality. In a broader context of diversity or distributional inequality, there may be a relatively more prominent qualitative flavour, and in view of that, the Gini-Simpaon index may be appropriate. To blend qualitative and quantitative variations together, some utility-oriented generalizations of the Gini-Simpson index are considered and their general properties are studied. Decomposability properties of such measures are also discussed.