Many scholars have argued that once “basic needs” have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing...

We propose a model of "trade" between high income and low-income groups where the rich being scared of the spread of infection hires the poor to engage them in exposure-intensive outdoor activities as workers in the household industry. People who endure hardships and sustain exposure to...

COVID-19 has been a tragedy for California. More than 4 million Californians have contracted the disease, and over 64,000 have died from it. And beyond the cost of illness and death, the pandemic and the state’s actions to contain it have devastated California’s economy. Low-income and...

Educational reforms aim to improve education quality and accessibility, creating positive externalities like individual growth and societal benefits. Although the global educational attainment has progressed, disparities still exist. This study applies the four-cell matrix developed by Münich...

Although much attention in America and many other countries is devoted—and rightly so—to gaps between demographic groups resulting in part from discrimination, one of the most striking gaps is that between the incomes of low-wage earners and the incomes of high earners

Using novel data on new business registrations in the US, we examine how historical factors that shape persistent individualistic culture affect the geographic distribution of entrepreneurial activity in modern times. Current-day new business formation in US counties is positively related to the...

How much work is ‘‘too much’’ for children aged 10-14 in Egypt? Our narrow focus here is on ‘‘work that does not interfere with school attendance.’’ For girls, work includes time spent in household chores and subsistence activities. We estimate simultaneous hours of work and...

This article examines the effect of first-, second-, and third-level of parental education on the family size. The study further examines the effect of sex composition, particularly son’s preference, on family size. The present study is based on primary data and decomposes the effect of male...

Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre-industrial incomes and life expectancies as unequal as they are today? For want of sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered. This paper infers inequality for 14 ancient, pre-industrial societies using...

This paper re-examines Earl Hamilton's famous 1929 thesis on 'Profit Inflation' and the 'birth of modern industrial capitalism': namely, that the inflationary forces of the Price Revolution era produced a widening gap between prices and wages, thus providing industrial entrepreneurs with...