This study uses the Luxembourg Income Study to examine the size of the middle class across several less developed American nations. One main finding is that in the mid 2000s the size of the middle class in Latin America does not seem to depend on demographic factors. A second finding is that, in...

This paper updates and extends my earlier work (published in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Economic Issues on how the middle class fares throughout the world. Wave #6 data from the Luxembourg Income Study, recently released and centered around 2004, provides an opportunity to assess what...

This paper compares poverty rates for female-headed families and for other families in a number of developed countries. The author concludes that there are many different reasons female-headed families suffer relatively greater poverty in some countries but not in other countries. One...

This article employs the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) to compare poverty rates for female-headed households (FHHs) with poverty rates for other households in a number of developed and transitional economies. It then seeks to explain why, in some countries, female-headed households are so much...

Did the US middle class benefit from the 1990s economic boom? Did this halt or reverse a middle class decline from the previous decade or more? Is a shrinking middle class strictly a US phenomenon with domestic causes, or is a problem that has plagued most of the world economy? This paper will...