The traditional approach to poverty measurement puts no explicit weight on success at increasing the typical level of living of the poorest—raising the consumption floor. To address this deficiency, the paper defines and measures the expected value of the floor, allowing for transient effects...

This paper analyzes the incentives provided by the Italian Social Security System (SS) to supply labor. Italy is an interesting example in this context as: (1) fertility rates are very low while life expectancy has improved dramatically over the past decades; (2) the SS Program is extremely...