Our point is that choosing among inequality measures always requires a normative judgment, so one cannot identify a single “best metric” without first determining what “best” means in a given situation. The seven words that Asada quotes from our article are from a rhetorical question that we used to illustrate exactly the opposite: that there are no inherently “best” metrics for assessing inequality.
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2010, 22)Īsada has misread our description of the implicit value judgments embedded in some measures as a prescription for how to use those measures.Īsada also has misread the general purpose of our article, when she states that our “effort to explore the ‘best metric for assessing trends in inequality’ is commendable” (617). We thus urge researchers to avoid uncritically using a single measure (such as a rate ratio) simply because it is widely accepted practice to do so, and to consider the implicit normative judgments embedded in many measures of inequality. Researchers should recognize that relying exclusively on a single measure of health inequality may implicitly endorse normative judgments and that this endorsement is an unavoidable byproduct of the structure of those measures…. Actually, we recommend nothing of the sort. Although we appreciate her comments, we believe that they are based on a fundamental misreading of our article.Īsada claims that we recommend “that analysts use relative inequality measures when concerned only about health inequality … but use absolute inequality measures when concerned also about other issues, such as the population's overall level of health and each group's level of health” (617).
We are grateful to Yukiko Asada for her commentary ( Asada 2010), as it gives us an opportunity to reiterate and clarify several points from our original article.
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