Anti-poverty policies often aim to reach poor individuals by targeting poor households. However, intra-household inequality may mean many poor individuals reside in non-poor households. Using Bangladeshi data, we first show that undernourished individuals are spread across the household...

To measure poverty, incomes must be equivalized across households with different structures. In this paper, we use a very flexible ordered response model to analyze the relationship be- tween income, demographic structure and subjective assessments of financial wellbeing drawn from the 1991-2008...

Over the last few decades in the United States, the poverty rate for female-headed families has been about five times the poverty rate for other family types. This paper addresses the question of why, in general, female-headed families are so much poorer than other families. Recognizing that...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of the gender wage gap. The difference in earnings is a consequence of a demographic regularity--that men tend to marry younger women--which limits women's labor mobility. However, couples are always free not to marry, and do so only if it is in...

What is the appropriate amount of child support to require in particular cases? How should we take account, if at all, of subsequent events such as either parent's remarriage? It seems obvious that the answers to such questions ought to turn on our purpose in requiring support payments in the...

The effect of an individual's risk aversion, measured via a series of hypothetical gambles over income, on time to marriage is examined using survival analysis. A search model predicts that, the more risk averse the individual, the shorter the time to first marriage. The estimates support the...

This essay is an updated, expanded and revised version of the second half of Divorce Rates, Marriage Rates, and the Problematic Persistence of Traditional Marital Roles, published in 2000 and also available on SSRN. It draws on demographic studies and comparative research to examine the...

In this paper I examine a number of economic arguments for the legal regulation of morality. Firstly, I present the harm principle as it was famously defined by John Stuart Mill, not only as a principle for a liberal objective criminal law but as a guiding principle for political liberalism. I...

Though many theories have been advanced to account for global differences in economic prosperity, little attention has been paid to the oldest and most fundamental of human institutions: kin-based institutions---the set of social norms governing descent, marriage, clan membership, post-marital...

The paper tries to unknot one of the factors with potential but not yet proven that affect marriage sex ratio. We see that immigration data improved the estimated percentage of married men. Nevertheless, effective data collection on immigration and emigration will go a long way to help in...