This paper develops data on the history of wages and prices in Beijing, Canton, Suzhou/Shanghai in China from the eighteenth century to the twentieth and compare them with leading cities in Europe, Japan and India in terms of nominal wages, the cost of living, and the standard of living. In the...

This article mobilizes and integrates both existing and new time series data on real wages, physical heights and age-heaping to examine the long-term trend of living standards and human capital for China during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Our findings confirm the existence of a...

This paper considers the 1990s in the context of long run economic growth performance. Growth in the context of this paper should be understood to comprise the growth of real living standards as well as real GDP per person. There were a number of new experiences during the decade that were...

This article examines the role of family and the state in relation to theliving standards of the elderly in East Asia. It tries to test whetherfamilial arrangement according to Confucian ethics, which are still takenseriously in East Asia, secures the minimum standards of living for theelderly....

This paper examines the impact of the transition from a planned toa market economy on living standards and welfare in the fiveRepublics of former Soviet Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, along with the Republicof Azerbaijan. A broad definition of...

This report summarises presentations and discussion at a conference on ‘New Cycles ofDisadvantage’ organised by CASE on behalf of the Economic and Social Research Councilfor the Treasury and other central government departments. It took place at Stoke RochfordHall near Grantham on 27-28...

We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects ofresource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has noeffect on municipal non-oil GDP or its composition, while onshore oil has only modest effects onnon-oil GDP...

Equivalisation of incomes for household size and composition is acceptedpractice when measuring poverty and inequality; adjustments to take account ofother variations in needs are rarely made. This paper explores the financialimplications of one possible source of additional needs: disability....

This report is the first policy study of the China Economic Research and AdvisoryProgramme, in which eminent economists from China and abroad have participated. Thereport focuses on the problems faced by China in the reform of its social security system.On the basis of economic principles and...

John Hills and Orsolya Lelkes have analysed results from the National Centrefor Social Research’s 1998 British Social Attitudes survey on public attitudes toredistribution and social security benefits and at how these relate to currentgovernment policies.There is a persistent public appetite...