This paper examines different approaches to the measurement of multidimensional inequality and poverty. First, it outlines three aspects preliminary to any multidimensional study: the selection of the relevant dimensions; the indicators used to measure them; and the procedures for their...

The generous Nordic model of welfare is commonly viewed as an exceptional success both in terms of equality and economic growth. However, it has recently become evident that subgroups of the population with weak labour market attachment and high welfare dependency, such as lone mothers, were...

Despite a broad consensus on the need to take into account the value of public services in distributional analysis, there is little reliable evidence on how the inclusion of such non-cash income actually affects poverty and inequality estimates. In particular, the equivalence scales applied to...

Despite a broad consensus on the need to account for the value of public services and geographical cost of living differences on the measurement of poverty, there is little reliable evidence on how these factors actually affect poverty estimates. Unlike the standard approach in studies of the...

The standard approach in empirical analyses of income distributions is to estimate income inequality in a country under the assumption of full interpersonal comparability of income. To be meaningful, this method requires that prices and qualities of goods as well as consumption habits are...

This paper is concerned with the problem of ranking and quantifying the extent of deprivation exhibited by multidimensional distributions, where the multiple attributes in which an individual can be deprived are represented by dichotomized variables. To this end we first aggregate deprivation...

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of including the value of public health care, longterm care, education and childcare on estimates of income inequality and financial poverty in 23 European countries. The valuation of public services and the identification of target groups rely on...

This paper is concerned with concepts – poverty, inequality, affluence, and polarization – that are typically treated in different literatures. Our aim here is to place them within a common framework and to identify the way in which different classes of income transfers contribute to...

This paper proposes a two-step aggregation method for measuring long-term income inequality and income mobility, where mobility is defined as an equalizer of long-term income. The first step consists of aggregating the income stream of each individual into a measure of permanent income, which...

In this paper, we introduce and apply a general framework for evaluating long-term income distributions according to the Equality of Opportunity principle (EOp). Our framework allows for both an ex-ante and an ex-post approach to EOp. Our ex-post approach relies on a permanent income measure...