This paper compares and assesses the income inequality between five European countries in the mid 1990's, employing the non-parametric technique of kernel density estimation. The countries used in this inequality exercise were Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland and the United Kingdom, and the...

This paper explains how to build Lorenz Curves for income distributions and discusses their use for inequality measurement. A short conceptual background, a step-by-step procedure and a simple numerical example illustrate how to calculate and draw Lorenz Curves. A discussion on the use of Lorenz...

This paper illustrates how Crossing Generalised Lorenz (GL) curves can be used to identify the best income distribution on social welfare grounds within a set of alternative income distributions generated by different policy options. It starts by illustrating two alternative income distributions...

This paper introduces a theory-based equivalence scale for public in-kind transfers, which justifies comparison of distributions of extended income (cash income plus the value of public services) between European countries. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed equivalence scale in an...

Using newly comprehensive data and tools from the Global Consumption and Income Project or CGIP, covering most of the world and five decades, we present a portrait of the changing global distribution of consumption and income and discuss its implications for our understanding of inequality,...

Like the other chapters in this volume of the Handbook of Income Distribution (and its predecessor), the aim of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of a particular area of research. We examine the literature on post-1970 trends in poverty and income inequality, up to 2010 or 2011...

German and United States data from the Luxembourg Income Study are used to compare the relative economic well-being of Germans and Americans in the 1980s. In our analysis we use both official equivalence scales and consumption-based country-specific equivalence scales developed for Germany and...

We summarise and decompose changes in the household disposable income distribution in 2007-2011 across 27 EU countries to study the impact of the Great Recession on household incomes and the key factors contributing to it. Using microsimulation techniques and applying the EU tax-benefit model...

Europe aims at combining income growth with improvements in social cohesion as measured by income and health inequalities. We show that, theoretically, both aims can be reconciled only under very specific conditions concerning the type of growth and the income responsiveness of health. We...