This paper measures high medical expenses in ten developed countries, both overall and by income and age, providing some of the best evidence to date on the extent of high medical spending across and within countries. Using comparable household-level data on out-of pocket (OOP) medical...

This research aims to compare different methods of measuring the middle class in middle-income countries. I compare income-based measures to socio-economic measures, using both per capita and equivalized incomes. First I calculate the size of the middle class using the different measures in six...

We introduce two separate datasets (The Global Consumption Dataset (GCD) and The Global Income Dataset (GID)) containing an unprecedented portrait of consumption and income of persons over time, within and across countries, around the world. The benchmark version of the dataset presents...

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the behaviour of Inequality of Opportunity (IOp henceforth) in developing countries. The analysis is carried out using microdata collected by national surveys and harmonised by the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The LIS database incorporates a wide...

As health care costs rise, so too does the importance of assessing their incidence, and factoring these costs into measures of post-government income distribution. This paper contributes to this assessment by calculating the effect of government policy on the distribution of income by adjusting...

In comparative analysis, we know that shape of income distribution are variable and broadly related to typesf welfare capitalism. Here, we expand on the socio-economic regimes literature and show almost perfect similarity between varieties of capitalism (VoC) and varieties of distributions...

Intra-household inequality continues to remain a neglected corner despite renewed focus on income and wealth inequality. Using the LIS micro data, we present evidence that this neglect is Equivalent to ignoring up to a third of total inequality. For a wide range of countries and over four...

This chapter examines the rates of poverty and inequality in Israel over time and in comparison with other OECD countries. It looks at two main groups: those aged 59 and under and those aged 66 and over. In the age 59 and under population, Israel’s poverty and inequality rates are among the...

We develop a quantitative heterogeneous-agents general equilibrium model that reproduces the income inequalities of 32 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Using this model, we compute the optimal income tax rate for each country under the equal-weight...

Piketty's rg implies an increase in capital-output ratio and in the share of capital income in net output. But it still does not guarantee the increase in personal income inequality. We derive the conditions for the "pass-through" of the rise in the share of capital income to greater personal...