In what follows, Section 2 describes the main measures of health inequality. Section 3 gives a
preference foundation for these measures.We characterize the Gini index, the concentration index
andWagstaff’s (2002) achievement index.We also briefly discuss the extension of our techniques
to characterize and design absolute measures of health inequality. Section 4, which concludes the
paper, discusses the appeal of the conditions introduced throughout the paper and, hence, of the
measures that they characterize, and considers possible extensions and generalizations. All proofs
are in Appendix A