Poverty rates calculated on the basis of household consumption expenditures are routinely compared across countries and time. The surveys which underlie these comparisons typically differ in the types of food and non-food expenditures included, often in ways which are easily overlooked by...

This paper proposes a measure of the contribution of unequal opportunities to earnings inequality. Drawing on the distinction between "circumstance" and "effort" variables in John Roemer's work on equality of opportunity, we associate inequality of opportunities with five observed circumstances...