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	Isolation Index	Gini Coefficient	Lorenz Curve
Field	Sociology	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1954	1912	1905
Originator	Wendell Bell (formalization of P* indices)	Corrado Gini	Max Otto Lorenz
Type	Exposure-dimension segregation index	Scalar measure of statistical dispersion / inequality	Graphical representation of distributional inequality
Seminal source	Bell, W. (1954). A probability model for the measurement of ecological segregation. Social Forces, 32(4), 357–364.	Ceriani, L., & Verme, P. (2012). The origins of the Gini index: extracts from Variabilità e Mutabilità (1912) by Corrado Gini. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 10(3), 421–443.	Lorenz, M. O. (1905). Methods of measuring the concentration of wealth. Publications of the American Statistical Association, 9(70), 209–219.
Aliases	P* isolation index, interaction index, exposure index, Bell isolation index	Gini index, Gini ratio, Gini concentration ratio, G	Lorenz concentration curve, Lorenz diagram, cumulative share curve
Related	5	5	5
Summary	The isolation index measures the exposure dimension of segregation: the extent to which members of a minority group are exposed only to one another rather than to members of other groups. It answers the question 'what is the own-group share of the typical neighbor (or classmate, or coworker) that a member of the focal group encounters?' Unlike evenness measures, it depends on the relative size of the group as well as its spatial distribution.	The Gini coefficient is the most widely used single-number summary of inequality in a distribution such as income or wealth. Introduced by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912, it equals twice the area between the Lorenz curve and the line of perfect equality, ranging from 0 when everyone has the same amount to a maximum approaching 1 when one unit holds everything.	The Lorenz curve is a graphical device that displays the full shape of inequality in a distribution by plotting the cumulative share of a quantity (such as income) held by the cumulative share of the population, ranked from poorest to richest. Introduced by Max Lorenz in 1905, it underlies the Gini coefficient and provides the basis for ranking distributions by inequality when one curve lies entirely above another.