STUDYING INEQUALITY IN INCOME DISTRIBUTION OF SINGLE-PERSON HOUSEHOLDS IN FOUR DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

The increasing frequency of single-person households has become a major economic phenomenon, and is likely to become an important political force. This paper focuses on differences related to inequality of income distribution among single-person households in Europe's four largest economies, i.e. France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. Income distribution was modeled in terms of individual characteristics using a parametric model with heterogeneous model parameters. Poverty differences were also broken down using the results of <link rid="b4">Biewen and Jenkins (2005</link>) in order to understand the relationship between poverty and individual characteristics among countries. Copyright © 2006 The Authors; Journal compilation © International Association for Research in Income and Wealth 2006.