This paper reports levels of income inequality and poverty in four Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia. Unlike many previous researchers who examine transition economies, we aggregate the detailed individual-level income surveys made available...

Objectives: Public policies generally target a subset of the population defined as poor or needy, but rarely are people poor or needy in the same way. This is particularly true among older adults, as they have fewer options to compensate for financial decisions made earlier in life. This study...

Choosing an appropriate equivalence scale is a prerequisite for comparisons of economic well-being income distribution, inequality or poverty. This is true for country specific work or for cross-national comparisons. Researchers generally either use a country specific equivalence scale (social...

German and United States data from the Luxembourg Income Study are used to compare the relative economic well-being of Germans and Americans in the 1980s. In our analysis we use both official equivalence scales and consumption-based country-specific equivalence scales developed for Germany and...

Shielding the Poor presents a group of studies on social protection in the developing world from leading researchers. These studies address the issue of vulnerability of the poor to adverse shocks and propose policies to increase their protection and coping capacity. The studies emphasize the...

Shielding the Poor presents a group of studies on social protection in the developing world from leading researchers. These studies address the issue of vulnerability of the poor to adverse shocks and propose policies to increase their protection and coping capacity. The studies emphasize the...