Despite the widespread use of income as a measure of household welfare, there is much to recommend the use of consumption. Indeed, standard economic arguments suggest that consumption expenditure will better reflect expected lifetime resources and many economists have been unequivocal in...

In any policy-orientated study of family welfare, it is inevitable that some comparison of welfare between households with different compositions will be required, and the theory of (adult) equivalence scales aims to formalise the way in which these comparisons may be made. An adult equivalence...

This paper presents a review of non-experimental methods for the evaluation of social programmes. We consider matching and selection methods and analyse each for cross-section, repeated cross-section and longitudinal data. The methods are assessed drawing on evidence from labour market...