Ordinal multidimensional inequality: theory and application to the 2x2 case

This paper develops a method for ordinal comparison of multidimensional inequality. In our model, one distribution is more unequal than another when the distributions have common arithmetic median and the first can be obtained from second by one or more elementary shifts in population density that increase inequality. For the benchmark 2x2 case (i.e. the case of two binary outcome variables), we derive an empirical approach to making ordinal inequality comparisons. As an illustration, we apply the model to childhood poverty in Mozambique