We study inter-temporal changes in poverty for Germany from year 1978 to 2003, and we employ the bootstrap method to test for statistical significance of results. All results are decomposed by household type and region. Poverty estimates are particularly high for single parents. Most striking,...

When individual or household incomes are collected for administrative or scientific surveys, the reference period of income is sometimes a month, sometimes a quarter, and sometimes a year. This reference period of income likely affects the shape of the distribution and derived measures of...

This paper studies the relationships between annual and subannual inequality and mobility during the course of the year. We apply an exact decomposition framework as outlined in Wodon and Yitzhaki (Econ Bull 4:1-8, 2003), and in Yitzhaki and Wodon (Research on Economic Inequality 12:179-199,...

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...

Research on wealth inequality usually focuses on real and financial assets, while pension wealth – the present value of future pension entitlements from public and company pension schemes – receives little attention. This is astonishing, given that pension plans play an important role for...