This book addresses the disparities that arise when measuring and modeling societal behavior and progress across the social sciences. It looks at why and how different disciplines and even researchers can use the same data and yet come to different conclusions about equality of opportunity, economic and social mobility, poverty and polarization, and conflict and segregation. Because societal behavior and progress exist only in the context of other key aspects, modeling becomes exponentially more complex as more of these aspects are factored into considerations. The content of this book transcends disciplinary boundaries, providing valuable information on measuring and modeling to economists, sociologists, and political scientists who are interested in data-based analysis of pressing social issues.

Analyzes and explains dissimilarities of distributions in many dimensions Introduces recently developed indices and tests for ordering groups and measuring dissimilarity Outlines a process for identifying the number, size and determinants of latent subgroups

Autorentext
Gordon Anderson is a member of the Governing Councils and Editorial Boards of The International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, and ECINEQ (Society for the Study of Economic Inequality). He has held Chair positions at the University of Toronto and was also a Professor at McMaster University, both in Canada. He received the Bowley Prize in 1983 and the Sayers Prize in 1984, the Journal of Applied Econometrics' Distinguished Author Award in 2004, and the Connaught Senior Research Fellowship in 2005 and is a Fellow of the Journal of Econometrics.

Inhalt

1. Measuring the Wellbeing of Groups.- 2. Statistical Matters.- 3. Complete Orderings: Index Types and the Ambiguity Problem.- 4. Partial Orderings.- 5. Comparing Latent Subgroups.- 6. Ambiguity Comparability Segmentation and All That.- 7. Some Applications.