People feel economically insecure when they perceive a significant hazard or danger looming in the future, which they are unable to insure against, avoid or ignore. While all OECD countries devote significant resources to mitigate economic insecurity, no consensus exists on the best way to...

Recent research suggests that younger generations are less likely to be engaged in formal political participation than older ones. However, there is little evidence on the trends for non-formal participation (e.g. signing petitions, demonstrations, etc.) This paper tries to fill a gap in this...

The extent to which income inequality and poverty vary within countries across different regions is very relevant for policy decisions and monitoring. However, sub-national measures are scarce, given the complexity of producing indicators at the regional level from the available data and the...

Historically, discussions of income inequality have emphasised cross-sectional comparisons of levels of inequality of income. These comparisons have been used to argue that countries with more inequality are less healthy, less democratic, more crime-infested, less happy, less mobile and less...

Valuable information exists already on household economic resources. The national accounts provide aggregate measures and micro sources (surveys, administrative records, and censuses) can be used to derive measures of the distribution across households groups. Over the years, however, macro and...

Much valuable information exists already on household economic resources (i.e. income, consumption and wealth). Indeed, the national accounts provide aggregate measures and micro sources (surveys, administrative records, and censuses) can be used to derive measures of the distribution across...

While environmental economics studies using stated life satisfaction data have been gaining attention, much of this body of work remains exploratory. In this study we contribute to this emerging body of research by combining OECD survey data from four European countries on life satisfaction and...

Since income is the return on wealth, the total wealth of any given country should be on the order of 20 times its GDP. Instead the average observed ratio from the balance sheet accounts of the System of National Accounts (SNA) is a factor of 2.6 to 6.6, depending on whether natural resource...

Housing is a core element of people’s material living standards. It is essential to meet basic needs, such as for shelter from weather conditions, and to offer a sense of personal security, privacy and personal space. Good housing conditions are also essential for people’s health and affect...

This paper looks beyond the broad notion of social capital – which has been applied to a number of different phenomena –in order to clarify (i) the range of different elements that are encompassed by the term; and (ii) what needs to be done to further statistical research and development in...