Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes the dynamics of equivalent income in Germany in the eighties and nineties. Special emphasis is given to the separation of permanent and transitory components, the persistence of transitory shocks and their implications...

Lea Immel prepared this study while she was working at the Research Group Taxation and Fiscal Policy at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical...

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...

Currently there is a significant discussion in academia and the popular press over the present amount of inequality, the history of inequality and the negative effects on economies of inequality. Typical of this debate was a recent article by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, (30 Sept 2014,...

We examine the determinants of low income transitions using first-order Markov models that control for initial conditions effects (those found to be poor in the base year may be a nonrandom sample) and for attrition (panel retention may also be non-random). Our econometric model is a form of...

Assessments of whose income growth is the greatest and whose is the smallest are typically based on comparisons of income changes for income groups (e.g. rich versus poor) or income values (e.g. quantiles). However, income group and quantile composition changes over time because of income...

Poverty line definitions in use often lack a solid scientific foundation. This paper proposes to exploit data on income satisfaction to construct an evidence-based poverty line. The poverty line is identified by using its assumed unique property to explain income dissatisfaction best among all...

Current estimates of global poverty vary substantially across studies. In this paper we undertake a sensitivity analysis to highlight the importance of methodological choices in estimating global poverty. We measure global poverty using different data sources, parametric and nonparametric...

This paper analyzes the persistence of poverty in Sweden using a hazard rate model based on multiple spells. The model also accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and possibly endogenous initial conditions. We estimate the model on a large representative Swedish panel data set, LINDA, for the...

We provide an analytical framework within which changes in income inequality over time are related to the pattern of income growth across the income range, and the reshuffling of individuals in the income pecking order. We use it to explain how it was possible both for "the poor" to have fared...