Lectures on Inequality, Poverty and Welfare

These lectures aim to help readers understand the logics and nature of the main indicators of inequality and poverty, with special attention to their social welfare underpinnings. The key approach consists in linking inequality and poverty measurement with welfare evaluation. As concern for inequality and poverty stems from ethical considerations, the measurement of those aspects necessarily involves some value judgments. Those value judgments can be linked, directly or indirectly, to welfare assessments on the distribution of personal and social opportunities. Inequality and poverty are thus considered to be partial aspects of the welfare evaluation of the opportunities in a given society. The volume includes two applications that illustrate how the models can be implemented. They refer to inequality of opportunity and poverty in education, using PISA data.