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J Econ Inequal (2012) 10:421443
DOI 10.1007/s10888-011-9188-x
Received: 20 January 2011 / Accepted: 23 March 2011 / Published online: 10 June 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract The scope of this paper is to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Gini index by providing the original formulae. Corrado Gini introduced his index for the first time in a 1912 book published in Italian under the name of Variabilit e Mutabilit (Variability and Mutability). This article provides selected extracts of Part I of the book dedicated to measures of variability. We find that Gini proposed no less than 13 formulations of his index, none of which is known today to the large public. We also find that Gini anticipated some of the developments that derived from the study of his index.
Keywords Inequality Income distribution Corrado Gini Gini index
1 Introduction
One hundred years ago (1912), Corrado Gini (18841965) published the book Variability and Mutability (Variabilit e Mutabilit, [2]) where he presented for the first time the index that today is known as the Gini Index. The original book published in Italian has never been translated into English and the Gini index became known in the anglophone world probably because Gini engaged in a brief exchange with Hugh Dalton in the Economic Journal in 19201921 [1, 4]. Gini also discussed
L. Ceriani (B)
Universit Bocconi, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected]
P. Verme
The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected]
P. Verme
Universit di Torino, Turin, Italy
The origins of the Gini index: extracts from Variabilit e Mutabilit (1912) by Corrado Gini
Lidia Ceriani Paolo Verme
422 L. Ceriani, P. Verme
his index and its relation with the Lorenz curve in a 1914 article [3] that was later translated into English [5]. However, despite the numerous formulations of the Gini index that have appeared in the literature over the years, the original formulations are largely unknown.
As suggested by the title, Variability and Mutability is divided into two parts, the first discussing indices of variabilityincluding various versions of the Gini indexand the second discussing indices of mutability. Gini explains the difference between the two classes of indices as the first (variability) being devoted to the measurement of quantitative phenomena and the second (mutability) being devoted...