This paper joins in the debate on the size of the middle class in Latin America, providing an analysis of its structure and characteristics. Using several measurements, it finds that 40-60 percent of Latin American households are middle class, a share which has consolidated over the past decade....

There is an increasing literature that discusses how to measure the middle class. Some approaches are based on an arbitrary deÖnition such as income quartiles or the poverty line. Recently, Foster and Wolfson developed a methodology which lacks of arbitrariness that enables us to compare the...

Some approaches to measuring the middle class are based on an arbitrary definition such as income quartiles or the poverty line. Foster and Wolfson have recently developed a methodology without arbitrariness. We apply this tool and a complementary method–the relative distribution approach–to...

This document presents a systematic review of empirical approaches to the identification and measurement of the middle class as the concept is used in the applied literature. It then presents an arguably less arbitrary definition of the middle class which is based on sound principles of...

Rising income inequality is an anglo Saxon problem. For most of the other OECD countries, earnings dispersion is rather persistent. Vertical mobility is to be taken into account. The paper also looks at the relationship of income inequality, growth and employment. It elaborates the point that...

Este trabajo presenta y discute un conjunto de estadísticas que caracterizan el nivel y la evolución de la polarización laboral en Argentina entre los años 1992 y 2006. Los resultados obtenidos sugieren que el nivel de polarización ha atravesado una primera etapa de crecimiento para luego...

We expand upon the previous models of inequity aversion of Fehr and Schmidt [1], and Frohlich et al. [2], which assume that dictators get disutility if the final allocation of surplus deviates from the equal split (egalitarian principle) or from the subjects' production (libertarian principle)....

Empirical analyses of economic inequality, poverty, and mobility in Germany are, to an increas-ing extent, using microdata from the German Federal Statistical Office's contribution to the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) as well as data from the German...