We provide an update on the impact the COVID-19 pandemic on the demand for cash and the use of methods of payment based on data from the Bank Note Distribution System and from consumer surveys conducted in April and August 2021. Our key findings are as follows: Cash in circulation remained high...

Most existing empirical papers concerned about multidimensional poverty use the house- hold as the unit of analysis, meaning that multidimensional poverty status of the household is equated with the multidimensional poverty status of all individuals in the household. This assumption,...

The United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) is arguably the most widely used alternative to gross domestic product for measuring national development. This is in large part due to its multidimensional nature, as it incorporates not only income, but also education and health. However, the...

This paper investigates the impact of inequality on individual civic engagement at the community level, whether this impact persists over time, and what mechanisms may shape the relationship between inequality and civic engagement. The results show that inequality in Colombia is associated with...

In the past 30 years Costa Rica has grown steadily and social indicators have improved markedly. Well-being indicators are comparable or even above the OECD average in several dimensions, such as health, environment or life-satisfaction. This paper reviews the social progress that Costa Rica has...

The topic of rising income inequality does not only gain in relevance since the two prominent reports by the OECD (Growing unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries, Paris 2008; Divided we stand-Why inequality keeps rising, Paris 2011) but rather since the financial crisis. So far...

In response to a growing interest in comparing inequality levels and trends across countries, a number of cross-national inequality databases are now available. These databases differ considerably in purpose, coverage, data sources, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and quality of documentation....

This paper estimates the number of poor in various countries in Asia by applying an "amalgam poverty line", which is a weighted average of an absolute poverty line (such as $1.25 per day or $1.45 per day) and a reference income (such as the mean or the median income). The number of poor is...

In dieser Studie wird die Ungleichheit und Polarisierung der Einkommen in Deutschland in den letzten 30 Jahren untersucht. Neben der reinen eindimensionalen Einkommensbetrachtung wird dafür auch erstmals die Entwicklung der multidimensionalen Ungleichheit und Polarisierung von Einkommen und...

A recent trend in the study of poverty is to consider a relative poverty line, one that is responsive to the nature of the income distribution. We develop an axiomatic approach to the determination of an amalgam poverty line. Given a reference income (e.g. the mean or the median), the amalgam...