An L^p-norm based approach to measuring inter-distributional inequality

Abstract

This note proposes a class of indices of inter-distributional inequality (IDI) based on L^p-norm. We also modify the axiom of translation invariance and make it 'level sensitive'. Level sensitivity, in the context of IDI measures, essentially captures the idea that an IDI is less affected by change in the distributional inequality at higher margins of the distributions than at the lower margins. Our proposed IDI measure, in addition to satisfying some standard properties of IDI measures, also satisfies the axiom of level sensitivity.