The main contribution of this paper with respect to previous work is the use of data on subjective perceptions to identify the Latin American middle classes. This paper provides a set of comparisons between objective and subjective definitions of middle-class using data from the 2007 World...

We study fair and efficient tax-benefit schemes based on income and non-income factors under partial control. Partial control means that each factor is a specific mixture of unobserved ability (randomly drawn by nature) and effort (chosen by individuals who differ in tastes). Factors differ in...

In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality has dropped in countries that have experienced income growth (but not in those that did not). Modern growth has reduced the share of both the very unhappy and the perfectly happy....

Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective...

The Alkire and Foster (2011) methodology, as the mainstream approach to the measurement of multi-dimensional poverty in the developing world, is insensitive to inequality among the multidimensionally poor individuals and does not consider simultaneously the concepts of efficiency and...

This paper, prepared for the Handbook of Income Distribution (edited by A.B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon), reviews some of the central issues that arise in thinking about the motives for, politics of, constraints on and measurement of, redistribution. Amongst the themes are: the potential...

Este trabajo caracteriza las diferencias entre las distribuciones del ingreso de las áreas urbanas de América Latina a través de descomposiciones aplicadas sobre microdatos de las encuestas de hogares de los países de la región. Los resultados indican que las diferencias entre países en...

This document presents and discusses an extensive set of statistics aimed at characterizing the degree of economic polarisation in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. The study is based on a dataset of household surveys from 21 LAC countries in the period 1989-2004. Latin America...

En el presente trabajo se analiza la importancia de las instituciones en la distribución del ingreso. Se plantea un contexto donde sólo pueden existir cambios en la varianza de la distribución y no en la media (se supone en el modelo planteado que no hay inversión), y se obtiene que la...