1. Introduction
Preference foundations give conditions that are necessary and sufficient for a particular model
and, thereby, allow assessing the empirical content of a model. The conditions that are identified
can serve to justify or to refute a given model. In this paper we will derive preference foundations
for the models that underlie the most common ways to measure health inequality.
The literature on the measurement of health inequalities is vast and rapidly growing and has
benefited from contributions from a number of disciplinary perspectives.1 Economists have made