Using longitudinal data for 1968-2009 for male household heads, we determine the prevalence of pre- retirement age disability and its association with a wide range of outcomes, including earnings, income, and consumption. We then employ some of these quantities in the optimal social insurance...

This paper examines poverty in the United States from 1960 through 2005. We investigate how poverty rates and poverty gaps have changed over time, explore how these trends differ across family types, contrast these trends for several different income and consumption measures of poverty, and...

In the U.S., analyses of poverty rates and the effects of anti-poverty programs rely almost exclusively on income data. In earlier work (Meyer and Sullivan, 2003) we emphasized that conceptual arguments generally favor using consumption data to measure the well-being of the poor, and, on...

We evaluate consumption and income measures of the material well-being of the poor. We begin with conceptual and pragmatic reasons that favor income or consumption. Then, we empirically examine the quality of standard data by studying measurement error and under-reporting, and by comparing...

Official income inequality statistics indicate a sharp rise in inequality over the past five decades. These statistics do not accurately reflect inequality because income is poorly measured, particularly in the tails of the distribution, and current income differs from permanent income, failing...

Previous studies tend to find that immigration has a weak negative effect on the employment and earnings of native-born workers. These studies overlook the effect of immigration on an important sector of the labor force, the self- employed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that immigrants, especially...