Between Pareto and Gini: The Origins of Personal Inequality Measurement in Italy, 1894–1939

Abstract

The Italian contribution to the emergence of modern inequality measurement has been, so far, mainly discussed from a methodological standpoint, or has focused on Vilfredo Pareto’s theoretical contribution. This article offers a first survey of the Italian empirical literature on measuring inequality, from the earliest contributions in the 1890s to the end of the interwar decades, discussing the motivations and the sociopolitical milieu in which this literature developed.