Issues of economic inequality and poverty have become increasingly central to public debate over the past fifty years. The literature on measuring economic inequality and poverty has vastly expanded, developing many new methods but also generating many controversies. Economic Inequality and Poverty provides a systematic treatment of the development of inequality and poverty, focusing on how income inequality and poverty measurements have evolved in recent decades and identifying approaches to resolving some of the methodological and factual conflicts. The bookâs primary aim is to analyse the relationships between individuals and householdsâ distributions of economic variables. These relationships are crucial in understanding many economic phenomena. Kakwani and Son employ household surveys to illustrate the application of their framework, demonstrating its importance in drawing evidence-based policy conclusions.

About the Author:
Nanak Kakwani, Visiting Professor of Economics, China Institute for Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University, Hyun H. Son, Principal Evaluation Specialist, Asian Development Bank

Nanak Kakwani is a Distinguished Fellow of the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation in India. He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Research Committee of Social Science and awarded the Mahalanobis gold medal for outstanding quantitative economics contributions. His well-known Kakwani Index has been a standard measure for progressivity in taxation and other social science. Nanak Kakwani has been Visiting Professor of Economics at the China Institute for Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University since 2017. He was a Professor of Economics and Head of the Department of Econometrics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney during 1970â2000. He was Chief Economist and Director of the United Nations Development Programmeâs International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth in Brazil from 2004 to 2006.

Hyun H. Son is a principal evaluation specialist in the Independent Evaluation Department of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Before joining ADB in March 2007, she was a poverty specialist at the United Nations Development Programme. She also worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. and taught at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of New South Wales and a Masterâs in Public Policy from Harvard University.