Abstract
The paper stresses the correspondence between the second inequality measure (L) developed by Theil (1967) from Information Theory and one member of the family of indices proposed by Atkinson (1970), based on a measure of social welfare. The sensitivity of L to regressive income transfers is compared with the sensitivities of the Gini index and the redundancy (Theil's first measure). It is shown how the inequality within strata can be estimated when computing L for grouped data. In the last section the size distribution of income in Brazil in 1960, 1970, 1980 and the period 1985-89 is analysed, showing the importance of using different inequality measures in order to better detect the changes in the distribution.
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