A growing literature in economics points to the importance of targeting policy towards making people happy rather than towards making them well-off. Empirical work in this area relies, however, on a simple direct question to survey respondents on how happy they feel. This study shows, using...

The authors use the techniques of decomposition analysis to explain differences in survival rates between different groups of 1st year undergraduate students at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and explain how much of the overall inequality in survival rates can be explained by...

This paper complements the burgeoning literature on country-specific studies of happiness by taking a global look at happiness and its determinants. In so doing, it makes two contributions. First, it presents indicators of happiness that are 'equity adjusted' and compares their values to those...

This paper argues that inter-group disparities in economic welfare are best measured by intercommunity income differences and it proceeds to analyse the structure of such income differences through the decomposition of the ratio of the respective group incomes. Simulation experiments then...

One way of measuring the deprivation or poverty of persons is to use monetary-based measures: a person is regarded as 'poor' if his/her income (or expenditure) falls below a poverty line value. Such an approach - usually termed poverty analysis - has spawned a large literature embodying several...

The use of breathalysers to determine whether a person is 'Driving Under the Influence' (DUI) is an example of situations in which the outcome of a test - positive or negative - is used to determine whether a condition exists. As such, it is susceptible to a fallacy that is inherent in such...