In many developing countries, there does not exist a time series of nationally repre- sentative household budget or income surveys, while there often are urban household surveys as well as nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) which lack information on incomes. This...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

Standard theory of intertemporal choice predicts that people smooth out life-cycle changes in income by borrowing and saving, such that their standard of living in any given year depends more on lifetime income than on that year's income. Yet, contemporary empirical studies of income inequality...

In this article, we explore the implications of this literature for understanding the relationship between climate change policies and consumption. We identify a number of ways in which accounting for the implications of the new happiness literature could lead to laws and policies that influence...

Differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality. However, as this finding relies on cross-section data, we may confuse older with wealthier. We propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross-sections, which eliminates transitory...

We provide a systematic analysis of the properties of individual returns to wealth using twelve years of population data from Norway's administrative tax records. We document a number of novel results. First, individuals earn markedly different average returns on their net worth (a standard...

In this paper we propose a new measure of vulnerability called vulnerability to downside risk. The relevant benchmark for this new measure is the current level of wellbeing of a household as opposed to another benchmark such as the poverty line. We argue that this measure adds complementary...

In this paper we investigate the factors affecting income levels, income growth, and poverty reduction in rural Indonesia following the crisis of 1997/98. We particu- larly investigate the relative roles of non-farm incomes, productivity improvements achieved via changes in crops versus...

Using detailed longitudinal data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) from 1998 to 2008, this paper analyzes gender-specific impacts as well as anticipation and adaptation to major life and labor market events. We focus on six major events: marriage, divorce, widowhood,...

Spurred by international commitments and expanded funding at the national and international level, attendance in education and associated years of schooling have expanded substantially in developing countries in recent years. But has this expansion in enrolments reduced existing inequalities in...