The last decade has seen a sustained surge of interest in measures of subjective well-being on the part of economists and other social scientists. The vast majority of the academic literature on subjective well-being focuses on measures of life evaluation, as does most discussion of how measures...

Economic policies shape how much people earn as well as how stable their income and jobs are. The level and stability of earnings both matter for well-being. Standard economic aggregates do not measure accurately the economic uncertainty which households are facing. This paper shows that...

This paper uses household level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) over the period 1991 to 2008 to analyse the driving factors of movements in the German household savings rate. Specifically, it analyses the impact of the precautionary savings motive and the impact of the 2002...

The decline in macroeconomic volatility from the 1980s to the onset of the Great Recession did not, in general, translate into more microeconomic stability. While microeconomic volatility can reflect growth-generating processes, such as creative destruction and re-allocation of resources,...

This paper presents the findings from an OECD International Network on Financial Education pilot study undertaken in 14 countries. The analysis focuses on variations in financial knowledge, behaviour and attitude across countries and within countries by socio-demographics.The results highlight a...

Many studies on household energy efficiency investments suggest that a wide range of seemingly profitable investments are not taken up. This paper provides novel evidence on the main factors behind consumer choices using the OECD Survey on Household Environmental Behaviour and Attitudes. The...

This paper describes how household wealth is distributed in 28 OECD countries, based on evidence from the second wave of the OECD Wealth Distribution Database. A number of general patterns emerge from these data. First, wealth concentration is twice the level of income inequality: across the 28...

Where they exist, tariffs for water supply and sanitation services face a tension between different policy objectives, such as ensuring the financial sustainability of service provision and ensuring access to all, including vulnerable and poor social groups. Governments (local and national)...