The net, positive, effect of unemployment at conception on birth outcomes in developed countries is likely overestimated in the literature. This is the consequence of ignoring the effects of unemployment during pregnancy. Using data from Israel, we not only confirm this finding but also find...

We argue that inter-country comparisons of income poverty based on poverty lines uniformly reflecting the costs of the basic requirements of human beings are superior to the existing money-metric approaches. In this exercise, we implement a uniform approach to poverty assessment based on basic...