Implementation of broad approaches to welfare analysis usually entails the use of 'subjective' welfare indicators. We analyse BHPS data on financial wellbeing to determine whether reported current and retrospective perceptions are consistent with each other and with the existence of a common...

Factor rotation is widely used to interpret the estimated factor loadings from latent variable models. Rotation methods embody a priori concepts of `complexity' of factor structures, which they seek to minimise. Surprisingly, it is rare for researchers to exploit one of the most common and...

We test the robustness of the results of Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2010) on the role of personality in explaining the education-health gradient by using alternative measures of child personality available in the National Child Development Study. We show that, alternatively to the authors...

To measure poverty, incomes must be equivalized across households with different structures. In this paper, we use a very flexible ordered response model to analyze the relationship be- tween income, demographic structure and subjective assessments of financial wellbeing drawn from the 1991-2008...

We examine the effect of survey measurement error on the empirical relationship between child mental health and personal and family characteristics, and between child mental health and educational progress. Our contribution is to use unique UK survey data that contains (potentially biased)...

We estimate the implicit disability costs faced by older people, using data on over 8,000 individuals from the UK Family Resources Survey. We extend previous research by using a more flexible statistical modelling approach and by allowing for measurement error in observed disability and standard...

We provide a critical discussion of the concept drug-related crime and review methods for estimating its volume, emphasising the importance of an appropriately defined counterfactual. We then construct new estimates for England and Wales in 2003-6, combining data from the Arrestee Survey and...

We consider the estimation of measures of persistent poverty in panel surveys with missing data, focusing on the persistent poverty headcount, its duration-adjusted variant, and a related measure used by the European Union as an indicator of the risk of persistent poverty. We develop a partial...

We investigate the nature and origin of comorbidity, defined as the tendency of members of marital couples to display correlated patterns of ill-health in later life. In the absence of long-term prospective data on couples, we use long-range recall data from the pan-European SHARELife survey and...

We study the relationship between individuals' participation in household panels, their health and employment states and the design of survey fieldwork procedures, using a comparative approach based on data from the UK BHPS and Australian HILDA Survey. We simulate the impact of alternative...