Bourguignon and Fields ("Poverty Measures and Anti-Poverty Policy") and Gangopadhyay and Subramanian ("Optimal Budgetary Intervention in Poverty Alleviation Schemes") have derived optimal budgetary rules for the redress of poverty through direct income transfers when poverty is measured by the...

This paper analyses whether the different powers and resources at the disposal of local and regional governments across Europe deliver greater satisfaction with political institutions and lead to greater personal happiness. The analysis uses microdata from the four available waves of the...

One of the targets of Europe's growth strategy (Europe 2020) is "reduction of poverty by aiming to lift at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty or social exclusion". Since poverty is a multidimensional concept, EUROSTAT proposes three indicators to calculate it: people at...

Throughout adulthood and old age, levels of well-being appear to remain relatively stable. In this chapter, we argue that focusing on a phase of life during which this positive picture does not necessarily prevail promises to help us better understand between-person disparities in the...

Getting a clear sense of the intensity and dynamics of corruption in a society or country is a critical platform for economic growth and development. This paper sets out to bring clarity to the study of corruption through an alternative approach. It examines and demonstrates how corruption can...

We discuss properties of alternatives or complements to GDP as a measure of welfare at business cycle frequencies. We argue that these figures are not useful to measure the welfare costs of business cycles. First, data is not available at an appropriate quality and frequency. Second, since the...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of well-being changes due to, on one side, the changes in the weighting scheme and, on the other, changes in the indicators along the time. An alternative methodology is proposed in this paper that allows one to decompose a multidimensional index...

Most of the aggregate level analyses on the relationship between objective and subjective measures for well-being have limited themselves to measures of national GDP and mean life satisfaction. We develop this line of research by embedding the analysis into the context of 289 NUTS regions in...

The purpose of the paper is to identify areas in South Africa where social-economic disparity exists using 2011 census data. Different indices are used to measure spatial disparity with the aim of finding the most appropriate approach for measuring disparities under different circumstances. The...