Equivalizing Incomes: A Normative Approach

The paper deals with the comparisonof living standards and investigates two normative methods ofderiving equivalizing transformations for a population whichhas different household types. The first one equates the utilitylevels of representative household members belonging to differenthouseholds. The second method evaluates the well-being of householdsby a social welfare ordering defined by means of household utilityfunctions. The methods can determine the implicit normative assumptionsinvolved in conducting distributional analysis using any equivalizingtransformation. In particular income-level dependent equivalencescales can be founded in this framework. The assumptions underlyingboth approaches are examined and compared.