The 1990s have brought renewed interest in distributional issues. How may we compare income distributions? How far can and should governments go in redistributing income? What constitutes an improvement in income tax? This book provides a synthesis of the many strands of distributional analysis used in the fields of social policy analysis, welfare theory and public finance, by means of a consistent mathematical approach using only basic constructions from calculus, probability and the economics of consumer behaviour. For this second edition material has been added to all chapters and additional citations and results are now included. This text is intended for students and teachers of public economics and social policy; and research economists.