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...

Income-expenditure surveys typically provide incomes on the household level. As households can differ in size and needs, a reliable assessment of inequality in living standards, therefore, necessitates the conversion of the original heterogeneous into an artificial quasi-homogeneous population....

Income-expenditure surveys typically provide incomes on the household level. As households can differ in size and needs, a reliable assessment of inequality in living standards, therefore, necessitates the conversion of the original heterogeneous into an artificial quasi-homogeneous population....

This Paper surveys major empirical regularities concerning changes in earnings inequality in Europe and the US over the past 25 years. Next, it indicates which of these regularities can be explained within the competitive demand–supply framework of analysis and what is left unexplained....

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...