On the Structure of Some Measures of Deprivation
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

On the Structure of Some Measures of Deprivation (pdf)

by Yongsheng Xu (with Achin Chakraborty and Prasanta K. Pattanaik)
April 2003

Keywords: Deprivation, Mean of squared deprivation gaps, Foster-Greer-Thorbecke class of deprivation measures

This paper discusses the structure of some measures of deprivation. We axiomatically characterise the mean of squared deprivation gaps, which is widely used in the applied literature and is a distinguished member of the important class of deprivation measures first introduced by Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (1984). In the course of doing so, we also provide, in an integrated framework, axiomatic characterisations of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke class of deprivation measures and several conspicuous subclasses of this class.

Comments and questions regarding this paper may be directed to Yongsheng Xu at yxu3@gsu.edu.