Measuring inequality and social stratification with Lorenz curvature
A new way to measure inequality using the shape of wealth distribution curves
Researchers created a new family of tools for measuring economic inequality by analyzing the curvature of Lorenz curves, which visualize how wealth is distributed across a population. The approach only fully satisfies standard inequality principles when set to its simplest form, and when tested against World Bank data across countries, it produces different rankings than existing inequality measures—especially for income-based comparisons.
Inequality measurements guide policy decisions on taxation, welfare, and development aid, so how we measure it shapes real outcomes for millions of people. This new method offers a mathematically cleaner alternative that could challenge current rankings of which countries are most unequal, potentially shifting where international attention and resources focus. The approach is also practical: its simplest version has a closed-form solution that makes calculations straightforward rather than computationally intensive.