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 “Variabilità e Mutabilità” (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.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Dalton, H.: The measurement of the inequality of incomes. Econ. J. 30, 348–461 (1920)
Gini, C.: Variabilità e Mutuabilità. Contributo allo Studio delle Distribuzioni e delle Relazioni Statistiche. C. Cuppini, Bologna (1912)
Gini, C.: Sulla misura della concentrazione e della variabilità dei caratteri. Atti R. Ist. Veneto Sci. Lett. Arti LXXIII(II), 1203–1248 (1914)
Gini, C.: Measurement of inequality of incomes. Econ. J. 31(121), 124–126 (1921)
Gini, C.: On the measurement of concentration and variability of characters. METRON - Int. J. Stat. LXIII(1), 3–38 (2005)
Laplace: Théorie Analytique des Probabilités. II Supplément. Courcier, Paris (1820)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ceriani, L., Verme, P. The origins of the Gini index: extracts from Variabilità e Mutabilità (1912) by Corrado Gini. J Econ Inequal 10, 421–443 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-011-9188-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-011-9188-x