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...

This paper proposes a test for Lorenz dominance. Given independent samples of income or other welfare related variable, we propose a test of the null hypothesis that the Lorenz curve for one population is dominated by the Lorenz curve for a second population. The test statistic is based on the...

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...

Does retirement represent a state of relative prosperity or unanticipated hardship? To assess whether individuals are successful in smoothing their well-being across the transition to retirement we analyse measures of subjective well-being (SWB) in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in...

International research has shown that household expenditure on nondurables significantly decreases at retirement - a finding that is inconsistent with the standard life-cycle model of consumption if retirement is anticipated. We analyze Australian panel data and find that the decline in grocery...