In the Italian public debate growing attention has been recently paid to ?household impoverishment?. Subjective indicators of economic condition show that this concern reflects a common sentiment of the Italian population. On the other hand, estimates based on the Bank of Italy?s Survey of...

Using data from the 2006 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes how a minimum wage affects employment, wage inequality, public expenditures, and aggregate income in the low-wage sector. It is shown that a statutory minimum wage of EUR 7.50 per hour would cost...

Do minimum wages reduce in-work-poverty and wage inequality? Or can alternative policies do better? We evaluate theses issues for the exemplary case of Germany that suffers from high unemployment among low-skilled workers and rising wage dispersion at the bottom of the wage distribution. We...

This paper contributes towards the growing debate concerning the world distribution of in- come and its evolution over that past three to four decades. Our methodological approach is twofold. First, we formally test for the number of modes in a cross-sectional analysis where each country is...

Rising income inequality is an anglo Saxon problem. For most of the other OECD countries, earnings dispersion is rather persistent. Vertical mobility is to be taken into account. The paper also looks at the relationship of income inequality, growth and employment. It elaborates the point that...

This paper provides an account of the evolution of poverty and inequality during adjustment in Bolivia, covering the period 1985?99. It turns out that urban poverty declined somewhat after the initial stabilization phase that followed the hyperinflation in 1985. A similar evolution of per capita...

Germany's social security system is surveyed, its benefits and contributions are discussed. The expansion of this system in the last decades is described, its impact on employment and growth is studied and proposals for the reform of the system are discussed.

The pool of early retirees is characterized by a large heterogeneity along several criteria. The present paper focuses on the key distinction between those in forced early retirement and those who retire early by individual choice. We start by estimating a retirement probit model for older...

Time-use statistics offer a unique tool for exploring a wide range of policy concerns including social change; division of labour; allocation of time for household work; the estimation of the value of household production; transportation; leisure and recreation; pension plans; and health-care...

This paper provides unprecedented direct evidence from large-scale survey data on both the intensity (how much?) and direction (to whom?) of income comparisons. Income comparisons are considered to be at least somewhat important by three-quarters of Europeans. They are associated with both lower...