The entanglement of attitudes toward inequality: the theoretical background and measurement for the EU countries in 2021

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for evaluating income distributions in terms of social welfare, economic inequality, and poverty. We introduce two types of social planners: SPϵ, who have an aversion to income inequality measured by the normative parameter ϵ, and SPν, who have an aversion to rank inequality measured by the normative parameter ν. Each member of society could play the role of a social planner, which implies that there are many possible levels of ϵ and ν. We then introduce the concept of inequality-entangled SPν and SPϵ. If a randomly selected SPν has parameter νi, one can automatically find ϵi of the inequality-entangled SPϵ, and vice versa. The paper proposes a method for eliciting pairs (νi, ϵi), i = 1, 2, …, n, from empirical income distributions, and for identifying a single pair (ν*, ϵ*) representing all n pairs. Finally, we apply this framework to assess social welfare, inequality, and poverty for the 27 European Union member countries in 2021.