One of the most frequently expressed concerns about the unprecedented economic boom that Ireland experienced in the second half of the 1990s has been that the benefits were not shared evenly, that rising living standards were accompanied by widening gaps leaving Ireland with a particularly...

Low pay is conventionally measured in terms of the gross earnings of the individual, related to benchmarks derived from the distribution of earnings such as half or two-thirds of the median. Poverty status, on the other hand, is usually assessed on the basis of the disposable income of the...

Many studies have focused on how demographic dynamics, such as changes in marriage patterns and the increasing share of households headed by a single adult, may contribute to rising earnings inequality. Here we instead ask how demographic differences between countries may underpin differences in...

Changes in household structures and employment patterns alter the balance between households with an above- versus a below-average poverty risk while also affecting relative income poverty thresholds. Examining eleven countries for which suitable microdata is available from the Luxembourg Income...

This paper uses data from the key comparative sources available for the rich countries to examine how both real median incomes and income inequality have evolved from around 1980 through the Great Recession. There are striking differences across OECD countries in average real median income...

Generating rising prosperity for middle-income households is now seen as a fundamental challenge for rich countries: when countries with similar institutional settings are grouped together, can a best-performing model in those terms be identified? This paper investigate how countries, and models...

Divergence between the evolution of GDP per capita and the income of a 'typical' household as measured in household surveys is giving rise to a range of serious concerns, especially in the USA. This paper investigates the extent of that divergence and the factors that contribute to it across 27...