Using a sample of 20 OECD countries it is shown that the majority of countries decreased the level of intragenerational redistribution in the first pillar of their pension systems, though the evidence is weak in statistical terms. We find strong correlations between changes of the so-called...

The rapid rise of China on the global economic stage could have substantial and unequal employment and wage effects in advanced industrialised democracies given China's large volume of low-wage labour. Thus far, these effects have not been analysed in the comparative political economy...

Most examinations of United States domestic antipoverty policy are inherently parochial, for they are based on the experiences of only our nation in isolation from the others. However, cross-national comparisons can also teach lessons about antipoverty policy. While all nations value low...

The paper investigates the definition of equity-regarding poverty measures when there are different household types in the population. It derives the implications of a between-type regressive transfer principle for poverty measures, for the choice of poverty lines and for the measurement of...

This study attempts to introduce a new method to measure relative income poverty. The aim is to find a solution which will combine information both on the depth of poverty and the quantity of the poor, i.e. the number of people living in poverty. Furthermore, a yardstick is sought which would be...

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...

We derive the asymptotic sampling distribution of various estimators frequently used to order distributions in terms of poverty, welfare and inequality. This includes estimators of most of the poverty indices currently in use, as well as estimators of the curves used to infer stochastic...

This paper begins by asking how poverty in affluent countries should be measured, before examining recent evidence on poverty intensity and its social significance. Section 1 advocates use of the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon index of poverty intensity and introduces the 'Poverty Box' as a summary...

The paper investigates how the income distribution affects the subjective well-being of society. Starting from the concept of a social welfare function defined on income distributions it assesses the preference for equality in European countries. It examines how mean income and the distribution...