Minimum wage increases are not a very effective mechanism for reducing poverty. They are not related to decreases in poverty rates. They can cost some low-income workers their jobs. And most minimum wage earners who gain from a higher minimum wage do not live in poor (or near-poor) families. A...

The cross-national intragenerational income mobility literature assumes within-country mobility is invariant over the period measured. We argue that a great social transformation "German reunification"abruptly and permanently altered economic mobility. Using standard measures of mobility (with...

In this paper we argue that mandatory retirement is only one aspect of a much broader system that influences an individual's retirement decision. We look at responses over time to variations in mandatory retirement rules faced by a sample of private-sector workers aged 62-64 in 1973. This is...

Traditional empirical models of retirement which use a self-assessed health measure have often found that the wage rate has a surprisingly small effect on retirement. Using both a self-reported health measure and one not based on self-report (subsequent mortality experience) in a more general...

Working-age people with disabilities are often overlooked in discussions of the latest statistics on employment, income, poverty, and other measures. This book reviews what current data on this population can and cannot tell us, as well as how data quality can be improved to better inform...

Using kernel density estimation we find that over their 1990s business cycles the entire distribution of after-tax (disposable) income moved to the right in the United States and Great Britain while inequality declined. In contrast, Germany and Japan experienced less growth, a rise in inequality...

Unsustainable growth in program costs and beneficiaries, together with a growing recognition that even people with severe impairments can work, led to fundamental disability policy reforms in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Great Britain. In Australia, rapid growth in disability recipiency led to...

Although industrialized nations have long provided public protection to working-age individuals with disabilities, the form has changed over time. The impetus for change has been multi-faceted: rapid growth in program costs; greater awareness that people with impairments are able and willing to...

German and US LIS data are used to compare the relative economic well-being of Germans and Americans in the 1980s. Both official and consumption-based country specific equivalence scales are used.

Although industrialized nations have long provided public protection to working-age individuals with disabilities, the form has changed over time. The impetus for change has been multi-faceted: rapid growth in program costs; greater awareness that people with impairments are able and willing to...