We provide a critique of the standard methodology which bases welfare comparisons between households on deflating household income and consumption by an equivalence scale. We argue that this leads to support for tax/transfer policies that significantly disadvantage low to middle in-come...

We provide a critique of the standard methodology which bases welfare comparisons between households on deflating household income and consumption by an equivalence scale. We argue that this leads to support for tax/transfer policies that significantly disadvantage low to middle income...

Mainstream monitoring of income dynamics and inequality is based on summary measures that can miss important phenomena prevalent in income distributions. Relying on quantile functions and the adapted statistical framework suggested by Székely and Rizzo (2004), we characterize the change and...

This work studies trends in income distributions and inequality in the European Union using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. We model the income distribution for each country under a Dagum distribution assumption and using maximum likelihood techniques. We...

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...

This paper uses pseudo panel techniques and a fixed effects estimator to analyse the determinants of preferences for redistribution in 34 European countries over the period 2002-2012. The data is drawn from the six available waves of the European Social Survey. The main result is that changes in...

Poor growth performance over the past decades in Europe has increased concerns for rising income dispersion and social exclusion. European authorities have recently launched the Europe 2020 strategy which aims to improve social inclusion in Europe on top of already existing European regional...

Two conversion schemes are usually employed for assessing personal-income inequality from household equivalent incomes: to weight household units by size or by needs. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, the authors show the sensitivity of country inequality rankings to conversion...

We examine the relationship between changes in a country’s public sector fiscal position and inequality at the top and bottom of the income distribution during the age of austerity (2006–13). We use a parametric Lorenz curve model and Gini-like indices of inequality as our measures to assess...

The match between perception and reality can depend on many different elements across societies over time, but subjective and objective dimensions are both relevant particularly in social class analysis. The aim of this paper is to investigate perceived social position and income inequality in...