Using data from five waves of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey, we find evidence of significant urban-rural expenditure inequality. Urban-rural inequality in Vietnam increased dramatically from 1993 to 1998, and peaked in 2002 before reducing slightly in 2004, and significantly in...

In most OECD member countries labor force attachment has increased in recent years in the 60+ group. Focus in the paper is on the development in this area in Denmark, Norway and Sweden since the 1990s. The development in the same period in the German labor market is included as a frame of...

Focus in the paper is on poverty among immigrants and refugees 50 years and older coming to Denmark from countries outside the OECD, with main emphasis on immigrants coming as guest workers before 1974, as refugees and as family members and marriage partners – tied movers – relative to...

Germany is known to have one of the lowest fertility rates among Western European countries and also relatively low employment rates of mothers with young children. Although these trends have been observed during the last decades, the German public has only recently begun discussing these...

The Nordic countries have remarkably high participation rates of mothers and a moderate decrease of fertility rates compared to other western countries. This has been attributed to the fact that the welfare state model and, especially, the family-friendly policies chosen in the Nordic countries...

The non take-up of social assistance benefits due to claim costs may seriously limit the anti-poverty effect of these programs. Yet, available evidence is fragmented and mostly relies on interview-based data, potentially biased by misreporting and measurement errors on both benefit entitlement...

We study the health effects of the spread of democratic institutions and the extension of voting rights in 15 European countries since the middle of the nineteenth century. We employ both cross country and cohort variation in heights and employ a new instrument for democracy and the extension of...

Welfare benefits in the Nordic countries are often tied to employment. We argue that this is one of the factors behind the success of the Nordic model, where a comprehensive welfare state is associated with high employment. In a general equilibrium setting, the underlining mechanism works...

Immigrant and native child poverty in Denmark, Norway and Sweden 1993 to 2001 is investigated using large sets of panel data. While native children face yearly poverty risks of less than 10 percent in all three countries and for all years investigated the increasing proportion of immigrant...

We develop methods and employ similar sample restrictions to analyze differences in intergenerational earnings mobility across the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We examine earnings mobility among pairs of fathers and sons as well as fathers and daughters...