This article considers statistical inference for consistent estimators of generalized Gini indices of inequality, poverty, and welfare. Our method does not require grouping the population into a fixed number of quantiles. The empirical indices are shown to be asymptotically normally distributed...

This paper considers methods for comparing poverty in two income distributions. We …first discuss the concept and usefulness of the Poverty Gap Pro…le (PGP) for comparing poverty in two populations. Dominance of one PGP over another suggests poverty dom- inance for a wide class of indices...

This article proposes consistent nonparametric methods for testing the null hypothesis of Lorenz dominance. The methods are based on a class of statistical functionals defined over the difference between the Lorenz curves for two samples of welfare-related variables. We present two specific test...

Methods are proposed for testing stochastic dominance of any pre--specified order, with primary interest in the distributions of income. We consider consistent tests, that are similar to Kolmogorov--Smirnov tests, of the complete set of restrictions that relate to the various forms of stochastic...

Australia's retirement income system has two distinctive features: a means-tested public pension, and a policy mandating private retirement saving. These programs have gained increasing international attention as countries address the challenges posed by population aging. In this paper the...

The causal effect of retirement on health is studied using the Australian 1993 Age Pension reform to isolate exogenous variation in retirement status. Using instrumental variable methods we find that retirement has a positive impact on subjective and objective measures of health.

Governments around the world are reforming their social security systems in light of the challenges posed by population aging. We study the 1993 Australian Age Pension reform, which progressively increased the eligibility age for women from 60 to 65 years. We find economically significant...