There is a large empirical literature on policy measures targeted at children but surprisingly very little theoretical foundation to ground the debate on the optimality of the different instruments. In the present paper, we examine the merit of targeting children through two general policies,...

When equivalence scales are used to compute the well-being of individuals, two possible weighting methods of the different household types have been proposed, the first one resorts to the family size and the second to the equivalence scale itself. The latter is criticized on the ground that it...

This paper illustrates how Crossing Generalised Lorenz (GL) curves can be used to identify the best income distribution on social welfare grounds within a set of alternative income distributions generated by different policy options. It starts by illustrating two alternative income distributions...

Income mobility is often thought to equalize permanent incomes and thereby to improve social welfare. The welfare analysis of mobility often fails, however, to account for the cost of the variability of periodic incomes around permanent incomes. This paper assesses the net welfare benefit of...

This paper provides a normative framework for the assessment of the distributional inci- dence of growth. By removing the anonymity axiom, such framework is able to evaluate the individual income changes over time and the reshuffling of individuals along the income distri- bution that are...

The traditional concept of a strict minimum of nontaxable income equal for all taxpayers embedded in most current income-tax systems is the result of a paradox of fiscal egalitarianism. The paper shows that substituting the traditional notion of a strict minimum of nontaxable income for a scheme...

This paper provides a set of sufficient conditions under which the preferences of an egalitarian social decision-maker accord with majority voting. We show that an additive and concave utilitarian social evaluation function is consistent with the outcomes of majority voting if we restrict the...

According to Chateauneuf (1996), we compare some inequality criteria. We investigate their properties and characteristics. Then, following the approach that links different levels of deprivation with alternative values of social welfare, we look for a functional that evaluates the well-being of...

This paper examines the impact of two effects of the pension reform package that the UK Government put forward in the May White Paper Security in retirement: the likely increase in the number of older people working due to a higher State Pension age and the likely rise in saving due to more...