6. Economic growth, welfare and the measurement of social mobility

Dardanoni's (1993) results on mobility and social welfare in a simple Markov model of “pure” mobility are extended to rank distributions characterized by unequal growth. Partial orders of welfare states are derived and shown to be equivalent to rankings of generalized permanent income Lorenz curves. The results represent a natural extension to mobility of Shorrocks' (1983) well-known generalization of the Lorenz dominance theorem of Kolm (1969) andAtkinson (1970).