This paper analyses the role played by financial literacy in savings decisions and wealth decumulation. The broad evidence shows that (elderly) households do not decumulate their assets as they age, contradicting the standard life-cycle theory, which predicts that households should decumulate...

The article empirically analyses the phenomenon of vulnerability to poverty – meant as an individual’s likelihood of becoming poor in the future. On the basis of studies conducted by the Italian Institute of Statistics on the consumption of Italian households in the years 1985-2001 and whose...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>This article estimates poverty persistence over an individual's lifetime, using two definitions: income poverty and a multidimensional index of lifestyle deprivation. We stress the ability of the two definitions to provide a generally consistent characterization of poverty...</p>

This paper focuses on vulnerability to poverty in Italy. We estimate the incidence of vulnerable households drawing from the ISTAT Household Budget Surveys for the year range 1985-2001. We classify as vulnerable those families with a higher-than-average probability of falling below the poverty...

We investigate whether lack of familiarity may contribute to an explanation of the gender gap in stock market participation and risk taking. We use ads in widely read women magazines to select companies that we assume to be more familiar to women than to men, and construct a “pink”...

The article empirically analyses the phenomenon of vulnerability to poverty – meant as an individual’s likelihood of becoming poor in the future. On the basis of studies conducted by the Italian Institute of Statistics on the consumption of Italian households in the years 1985-2001 and whose...

This paper analyses the effects of social security reforms on saving in Britain. Following the 1986 Social Security Act, the UK pension system has partially shifted from an unfunded basis towards a partially funded basis. Under the new pension scheme, individuals are given the option of...

This study analyses how childhood health determines future academic performance in Kagera region in Tanzania. Academic outcomes considered are years of education and delay in enrollment, while the measure of childhood health is (relative to the median) height. The repercussions of malnutrition...

Purpose – This paper seeks to measure and characterise the extent of consumer over‐indebtedness among the European Union (EU) member states. Design/methodology/approach – The study evaluates alternative measures of over‐indebtedness on the basis of the permanent‐income/life‐cycle...

This paper explores the mis-specification of preferences as a cause of the poor empirical performance of the traditional Life Cycle/Permanent Income model in explaining Italian households' consumption decisions. Consumption profiles generated under strict life cycle models could be hardly...