Variable Income Equivalence Scales : An Empirical Approach

The book presents a new survey method for assessing equivalence scales. While previous surveys have frequently been accused of providing data which are substantially biased by respondents' personal characteristics and other subjective biases the new method keeps bias to an absolute minimum. Another key feature is that the derived data adds information as to the impact of two key variables on equivalence scales: income and the number of employed household members. In contrast to the standard ‘independence of base assumption’, the equivalence scales presented are inversely related to the income level of the reference household (a single adult), and increase in the number of employed household members