We argue that inter-country comparisons of income poverty based on poverty lines uniformly reflecting the costs of the … and in the construction of income poverty lines that uniformly reflect the costs of the basic requirements of human beings … uniform approach to poverty assessment based on basic human capabilities for three countries: Nicaragua, Tanzania, and Vietnam …

Welfare caseloads in North America halved following reforms in the 1990s and 2000s. We study how this shift affected … families by linking Canadian welfare records to tax returns, medical spending, educational attainment, and crime data. We find … substantial and heterogeneous employment responses that increased average income despite reduced transfers. We find zero effects …

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income …, using a number of assumptions, we are able to estimate the elasticity of marginal utility with respect to income. We obtain …

Recent welfare reforms are prompting some state and local welfare agencies to use temporary help service firms to help … place welfare recipients into jobs. Concerns have arisen that these jobs are more likely to pay low wages, provide fewer … benefits, and offer less stability. We explore the effects of temporary help firms on the labor market outcomes of welfare …

The answer is that people's evaluations of their income situation are based on different considerations when the …, evaluations tend to be dominated by "social comparison" - what is happening to the incomes of others. An increase in the incomes … of others undercuts the tendency for happiness to grow with an increase in one's own income, and happiness remains fairly …