Aportaciones metodológicas sobre la medición de la desigualdad y la exclusión social

Resumen

The huge available literature related to economic inequality measurement does not allow us the choice of a best indicator when it is compared to the rest. Only the compatibility with the partial order induced by the Lorenz curves is widely accepted. However, not all of these consistent indicators seem to be able to measure the subject in a genuine way. On the other hand, social exclusion is a difficult concept to identify correctly, in which monetary and nonmonetary variables with different measurement scales are involved. Those variables have to be adequately synthetized to derive a global indicator, in a similar way as other social indicators have to be developed but keeping in mind the different nature of the involved variables. In this paper, additional conditions to obtain genuine inequality measures are imposed and its fulfilment by the usual indicators is analyzed. Moreover, the methodology to derive social exclusion synthetic indicators is studied, in such a way that difficulties imposed by the involved variables could be overcome. Finally, suitability of usual measures is checked.