Summary Households in developing countries are frequently hit by severe idiosyncratic and covariate shocks leading to high consumption volatility. A household's currently observed poverty status might therefore not be a good indicator of the household's general vulnerability to poverty. In the...

The informal sector is typically characterized as being very heterogeneous and possibly composed of two clearly distinct segments, sometimes called the lower and upper tiers. However, empirical evidence shows that even among lower tier entrepreneurs profitability can be quite high. We combine...

Summary One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that it does not take into account inequality within countries. We suggest a methodology which allows to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows comparisons of the level in...