This paper compares income inequality in former socialist countries with those in a market society, focusing on the ways in which social welfare systems operate in different states. Evidence of inequality and poverty is considered for three countries: Russia; Poland; and Finland. These issues in...

This paper compares poverty in the U.K. with 19 other countries. It is of particular interest because it uses the third wave of LIS data (early 1990 time period) and because it includes a number of of transitional economies as well as Taiwan. The main finding of this paper is that the overall...

This paper investigates trends in financial poverty in OECD countries by asking the following questions: 1) Have overall levels of poverty increased, decreased or remained stable? 2) Has the incidence of poverty shifted from certain demographic groups to others? 3) How has the social income...

Comparisons of the economic position of single older women in various industrialized countries have shown substantial differences, especially regarding the proportion of widows, divorcees, and never-married women experiencing poverty. This review aims at a comparative assessment of existing...

The object of this report is to review the available evidence on the extent and nature of financial poverty in modern rich nations within the OECD and selected other nations. While there is discussion of broader concepts of poverty such as those related to deficits in capabilities, social...

The topic of this paper is country comparisons of regional differences in poverty and inequality profiles. Four Eastern-European countries were examined in the final analysis: Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Russia.

This paper proposes an alternative formulation for the Sen-Shorrocks index of poverty intensity for survey data with sampling weights, and decomposes the Sen-Shorrocks index into the poverty rate, the average poverty gap ratio among the poor, and the overall Gini index of poverty gap ratios....

During recent years, both policy makers and administrators have become increasingly attentive to the economic distress of the weaker segments of society. In light of this development, many studies, including a number of comparative studies, were conducted both in Israel and throughout the world,...

Relative poverty lines such as one-half of median income have been widely used in poverty comparisons. The U.S. government has also been urged to adopt the notion of relative poverty lines. This paper contributes to the literature by developing statistical inferences for testing poverty measures...

The transition to a market economy has lead to liberalization in a great many spheres of society in the reform economies of Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, financial insecurity of many households persisted or increased, and certain parts of the population face for the first time...