Using taxation statistics, we estimate the income share held by top income groups in Australia over the period 1921-2002. We find that the income share of the richest fell from the 1920s until the mid-1940s, rose briefly in the post-war decade, and then declined until the early-1980s. During the...

This paper examines three basic issues in the measurement of poverty: the choice of poverty line, the index of poverty, and the relation between poverty and inequality. The general theme is that th ere is a diversity of judgments which enter the measurement of povert y and it is necessary to...

This paper reports on the investigation of a model of the determination of the share of household expenditure on alcohol using FES data for the United Kingdom, 1970-83, i.e., a time series of cross sections. The authors pay special attention to the occurrence of zero expenditure, variations in...

The equivalence scales used to adjust for differences in family composition when measuring poverty exhibit considerable variation. This paper suggests an alternative approach that allows for differences in social judgements regarding the treatment of different types of family and examines the...