A utilitarian social planner who maximizes social welfare assigns the available income to those who are most efficient in converting income into utility. However, when individuals are concerned about their income falling behind the incomes of others, the optimal income distribution under...

Closely following recent innovations in the literature on the multidimensional measurement of poverty, this paper provides similar measures for the top of the distribution using a dual cutoff method to identify individuals, who can be considered as rich in a multidimensional setting. We use this...

Closely following recent innovations in the literature on the multidimensional measurement of poverty, this paper provides similar measures for the top of the distribution using a dual cutoff method to identify individuals, who can be considered as rich in a multidimensional setting. We use this...

We employ data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate income to health causality. To account for unobserved heterogeneity, we focus on the relationship between earnings growth and changes in self-reported health status. Causal claims are predicated upon appropriate moment...

Closely following recent innovations in the literature on the multidimensional measurement of poverty, this paper provides similar measures for the top of the distribution using a dual cutoff method to identify individuals, who can be considered as rich in a multidimensional setting. We use this...

We employ data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate income to health causality. To account for unobserved heterogeneity, we focus on the relationship between earnings growth and changes in self-reported health status. Causal claims are predicated upon appropriate moment...

When individuals’ utility is a convex combination of their income and their concern at having a low relative income (the weights attached to income and to the concern at having a low relative income sum up to one), the maximization of aggregate utility yields an equal income distribution. This...

The GDP per person in India doubled from US $260 in 1980 to US $538 in 2003. However, growth has not been evenly distributed among India's various sectors, and the composition of GDP has changed. Agriculture used to be the leading sector, but its GDP share dropped from 57 per cent in 1950 to 22...

Broad differences in life expectancy are observed across countries and socio-demographic groups. This paper reviews the evidence for Italy on the level and development of these inequalities and discusses the strength and possible determinants of the relationship between life expectancy and education

We estimate the impact of the Great Recession of 2007–2009 on health outcomes in the United States. We show that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate resulted in a 7.8–8.8 percent increase in reports of poor health. Mental health was also adversely impacted and reports of...