The 'prediction approach' proposed by Dearden, Machin and Reed (DMR) consists in (1) regressing the observed incomes of the child and parent families on separate sets of predetermined variables, and (2) regressing the child's predicted income on that of the parents. Conceptually, this estimator...

We study the evolution of earnings inequality in Switzerland during the recession of the 1990s. We compare the Lorenz curves of the 1992 and 1997 distributions, as well as the related generalised Lorenz curves, given the pay deterioration witnessed during this period. The Lorenz curve is shown...

According to the catastrophic health expenditure methodology a house-hold is in catastrophe if its health out-of-pocket budget share exceeds a critical threshold. We develop a conceptual framework for addressing three questions in relation to this methodology, namely: 1. Can a budget share be...

To date, inequality orderings for ordered response data are only suitable for comparing distributions that share a common median state. In this paper we propose a methodology for comparing distributions irrespective of their medians. We set out to do so by introducing a general pre-ordering and...

L'étude de l'évolution de la distribution des salaires sous forme d'analyse de coupes transversales peut manquer de documenter des faits liés à la mobilité salariale de certains groupes de travailleurs. Ce travail, basé sur une étude en panel, vise à relativiser la stabilité de la...

An emerging literature in the field of income distribution suggests that inequality may persist in the long run. U.S. father and son income data extracted from the PSID support the hypothesis that the distribution of earnings of children raised in privileged environments welfare-dominates that...

Averaging methods are routinely used in order to limit biases resulting from the mismeasurement of permanent incomes. The Solon/Zimmerman estimator regresses a single-year measurement of the child's resources on a T-period average of the parents' income while the Behrman/Taubman estimator...

The OLS estimator of the intergenerational earnings correlation is biased towards zero, while the instrumental variables estimator is biased upwards. The first of these results arises because of measurement error, while the latter rests on the presumption that the education of the parent family...