A Note on Decomposing Measures of Social Welfare According to Sources of Income

Abstract

Measures of social welfare have been decomposed according to sources of income (Chakrabarty, 1983 and Debroy, 1986). By measures of social welfare we mean Sen's (1974) welfare measure, Kakwani's (1980) welfare measure and Kakwani's (1981) generalized welfare measure. We write Sen's welfare measure as W S , Kakwani's welfare measure as WK and Kakwani's generalized welfare measure as W. The theoretical decomposition of WS was carried out in Chakrabarty (1983) and the theoretical decompositions of W K and W were carried out in Debroy (1986).