ABSTRACT
Several of the most sophisticated, versatile, and complicated measures of inequality are based on the social welfare function. Because this model is heavily influenced by economic theory, inequality measures derived from it have special appeal to economists. Appropriately applied, however, these indexes offer excellent measurement opportunities to other social scientists, especially when the unit of distribution is income. This chapter presents a brief version of social welfare theory in order to elucidate the conceptual and mathematical bases of this family of indexes. The reader should consult appropriate sources (e.g., Boadway and Bruce, 1984; Sen, 1972) for more detail.
