Interpretation of Measures of Deviation from Ideal

Abstract

In this Chapter the various measures of deviation from ideal will be studied. In the literature there is not much study of this sort, because it is a controversial issue whether or not there should be an ideal of distribution, let alone the question what the ideal distribution should be. However, there have been developed quite a few measures of inequality, which can be used to measure the deviation from an equal or uniform distribution. A measure of inequality can be regarded as a special case of a measure of deviation, because the measure of deviation reduces to a measure of inequality when the ideal distribution is equal or uniform distribution. As discussed above, a uniform distribution is neither a theoretical ideal, nor a practical solution to the distribution problem, no matter what the political philosophy and the form of government may be. Thus it seems that these measures are not of much theoretical or practical significance, because a distribution with a greater measure of inequality is not necessarily worse than a distribution with a smaller measure of inequality. However, one measure of inequality, namely, the Dalton’ s measure, can be used for a measure of deviation from ideal as well and is particularly important because, as will be seen later, it is of the same form as the average social welfare function, which has a maximum magnitude when the distribution is ideal, whatever the form of the ideal may be.