A novel approach to the assessment of literacy is used to tackle the issue of effectiveness of years of schooling. The dichotomy inherent in the literacy rate is rejected in favor of a “practice-based” approach, which considers literacy as a multifaceted phenomenon as advocated in...

Introduction to the Special Issue on Inequality and the Great Recession

What are the challenges posed by the analysis of self-reported life satisfaction and material wellbeing/hardship? We explore the complex relationship between objective and subjective indicators using primary data from two diverse sources—a questionnaire survey of 3883 undergraduate students in...

We lay out alternative ways of melding measures of absolute and relative deprivation in an index of overall deprivation, exploring the choices the analyst faces in this enterprise. The indices derived are used to answer two important empirical questions. First, did overall deprivation fall in...