The share of couples where the wife out-earns the husband is increasing in many countries. In this paper, I investigate how this income dynamic affects mental health. Using data on all Swedish couples who married in 2001, I show that mental health is positively associated with own and spousal...

This paper identifies the socioeconomic drivers of earnings inequality in Peru in the period 2004-18. Using the ENAHO household surveys and data on routine task content of occupations, we apply inequality decomposition methods to the real earnings distribution, its quantiles, and the Gini index....

We find a U-shaped relation between happiness and religiosity in cross-country panel data after controlling for income levels. At a given level of income, the same level of happiness can be reached with high and low levels of religiosity, but not with intermediate levels. A rise in income causes...

Diversification into non-agricultural activities in rural areas can be broadly classified as either survival-led or opportunity-led. The existence of these two types of non-agricultural activities implies a U-shaped relationship between the share of income derived from non-agricultural...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

This paper studies income poverty among the 50+ population in 10 EU countries using newly collected data from the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) project. A measure of the household's disposable annual income is used. Relative income poverty range from 10 percent (in...

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...

We use several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to undertake international, intertemporal, and global comparisons of well-being. The conclusions emerging from the analysis are that our well-being measures drastically change our impression of levels of...

We use several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to undertake intertemporal and global comparisons of well-being. The conclusions emerging from the intertemporal analysis are that the impact of these measures on temporal trends in well-being is...