Within the course of the 20th century the American population went through a metamorphosis from being the tallest in the world, to being among the most overweight. The American height advantage over Western and Northern Europeans was between 3 and 9 cm in the middle of the 19th century....

The population of Norway has become one of the tallest in the world even overtaking Americans during the course of the second half of the 20th century not in terms of income, but in terms of physical stature and other indicators of biological welfare, such as longevity. This is also the case in...

Cross-national studies on happiness have focused on differences in level of happiness. The focus of this paper is on spread in happiness in the nation, also called ‘inequality in happiness’. Inequality in happiness in nations can be measured by the size of the standard deviation of responses...

Within the course of the 20th century the American population went through a metamorphosis from being the tallest in the world, to being among the most overweight. The American height advantage over Western and Northern Europeans was between 3 and 9 cm in the middle of the 19th century....

This paper presents an analysis of the recent evolution of social assistance in the developing world, looking at its complex typological configuration, which has interlinked with, and partly reflects the complex demographic and epidemiological transitions and rapid urbanization and economic...

If society's goal is to increase people's feelings of well-being, economic growth in itself will not do the job. Full employment and a generous and comprehensive social safety net do increase happiness. Such policies are arguably affordable not only in higher income nations but also in countries...

The majority of people in the informal sector have no access to reliable social protection schemes. This holds for the Arab countries just like for other parts of the developing world despite the fact that several Arab countries have made attempts to raise the share of households covered by...

In public policy discourse, the role of government is not universally accepted, but tends to have widespread support. Most of those who want smaller government with fewer programs accede to the notion that government is here to stay in, e.g., care for the poor. This paper challenges the role of...

The main issue of this article is to discuss the question of ‘precarity’ in the context of the theory of social quality (see Beck et al, 2001), with which to pave the way for developing further the theoretical foundation of precarity. Societal practice is the main challenge this concept...

The author wants to note that welfare reform is but one part of what is happening politically to gender relations, to women, and to poor mothers, even within the system of income support, in the United States. Of particular importance within income support is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC),...