We analyze a simple and tractable model of occupational choice in the presence of credit marketimperfections. We examine the effect of parameters governing technology and transaction costs, andhistory, in terms of the initial wealth distribution, in determining the long-term wealth...

The increases in human longevity in recent decades and the trends for early retirement have posed new challenges for policy makers, and require a holistic understanding of the processes that influence the economic resources of older people. This paper contributes to this knowledge by examining...

This paper studies the distribution of the classical t-ratio with data generatedfrom distributions with no nite moments and shows how classical testing is affectedby bimodality. A key condition in generating bimodality is independenceof the observations in the underlying data generating process...

In this paper we examine the concept of "vulnerability" (Townsend 1994) within thecontext of income mobility of the poor. We test for the dynamics of vulnerablehouseholds in the UK using Waves 1 - 12 of the British Household Panel Survey andfind that, of three different types of risks that we...

This paper is motivated by the lack of any obvious relationship betweenaggregate poverty and unemployment in Great Britain. We derive aframework based on individuals’ risks of unemployment and poverty,and how these vary over the economic cycle. Analysing the BritishHousehold Panel Survey for...

We provide a critique of the methods that have been used to derive measures ofincome risk and draw attention to the importance of demographic factors as asource of income risk. We also propose new measures of the contribution tototal income risk of demographic and labour market factors....

This paper argues that our understanding of income and poverty dynamicsbenefits from taking a life cycle perspective. A person’s age and familycircumstances – the factors that shape their life cycle – affect the likelihood ofexperiencing key life events, such as partnership formation,...

The paper analyses changes in poverty in Britain since 1997. A povertylevel of 60 percent of median equivalised income is used. The first partexamines the changes that occurred between 1996/7 and 2000/1 asshown by the Family Resources Survey, on which government estimatesof Households Below...

Specific functional forms are often used in economic models of distributions;goodness-of-fit measures are used to assess whether a functional form is appropriatein the light of real-world data. Standard approaches use a distance criterion based onthe EDF, an aggregation of differences in...