This paper examines the consequences of social security reform for the inequality of consumption across individuals. The idea is that inequality is at least in part the result of individual risk in earnings or asset returns, the effects of which accumulate over time to increase inequality within...

According to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index daily poll of the US population, taller people live better lives, at least on average. They evaluate their lives more favorably, and they are more likely to report a range of positive emotions such as enjoyment and happiness. They are also less...

This paper examines issues of household saving, growth. and aging in Taiwan. The Taiwanese patterns of high income growth, declines in fertility, and increases in life expectancy all have implications for life-cycle saving. We use data from fifteen consecutive household income and expenditure...

I respond to Atkinson's plea to revive welfare economics, and to considering alternative ethical frameworks when making policy recommendations. I examine a measure of self-reported evaluative wellbeing, the Cantril Ladder, and use data from Gallup to examine wellbeing over the life-cycle. I...

Durkheim's famous study of suicide is a precursor of a large contemporary literature that investigates the links between religion and health. The topic is particularly germane for the health of women and of the elderly, who are much more likely to be religious. In this paper, I use data from the...

This paper is broadly concerned with the living standards of older people in two contrasting developing countries, Cote d'Ivoire and Thailand. We use a series of household surveys from these two countries to present evidence on factors affecting the living standards of the elderly: living...

For thirty years, it has been accepted that consumption is smooth because permanent income is smoother than measured income. This paper considers the evidence for the contrary position, that permanent income is in fact less smooth than measured income, so that the smoothness of consumption...

There is currently much debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid and about what kind of projects can engender economic development. There is skepticism about the ability of econometric analysis to resolve these issues, or of development agencies to learn from their own experience. In...

We use data from the Gallup World Poll and from the Demographic and Health Surveys to investigate how subjective wellbeing (SWB) is affected by mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, including mortality from HIV/AIDS. The Gallup data provide direct evidence on Africans' own emotional and evaluative...

PPP-based national accounts have become an important part of the database for macroeconomists, development economists, and economic historians. Frequently used global data come from the Penn World Table (PWT) and the World Bank's World Development Indicators; a substantial fraction of the world...