Nanak Kakwani – författare

Issues of economic inequality and poverty have become increasingly central to public debate over the past fifty years. The literature on measuring economic inequality and poverty has vastly expanded, developing many new methods but also generating many controversies. Economic Inequality and Poverty provides a systematic treatment of the development of inequality and poverty, focusing on how income inequality and poverty measurements have evolved in recent decades and identifying approaches to resolving some of the methodological and factual conflicts. The books primary aim is to analyse the relationships between individuals and households distributions of economic variables. These relationships are crucial in understanding many economic phenomena. Kakwani and Son employ household surveys to illustrate the application of their framework, demonstrating its importance in drawing evidence-based policy conclusions.

First published in 1986, this book explores the areas of income distribution and welfare. Analyzing Redistribution Policies developed appropriate techniques to analyze the extent and nature of income inequality and welfare and to measure the direct impact of taxes and government cash transfers on the distribution of income by size of income and other household characteristics. What was the extent of inequality of income and which way was it moving? Was the burden of taxation evenly distributed across the population? Did the rich pay proportionately more or less taxes than the poor? What were the effects of government programs on the welfare of particular groups in the community? An attempt was made to answer these and other related questions by an analysis of the Australian data obtained from the 1975-1976 Household Expenditure Survey. Written in a fairly nontechnical manner, Analyzing Redistribution Policies can be understood with limited knowledge of economics and statistics.

Nanak Kakwani and Hyun Hwa Son make use of social welfare functions to derive indicators of development relevant to specific social objectives, such as poverty- and inequality-reduction.