Time poverty is a key yet conceptually contested dimension of household living standards. Both univariate and bivariate measures remain debated because there is no clear consensus on how to define and quantify socially necessary unpaid work, the time that money cannot substitute for, across...

This paper examines the evolution of the biological standard of living using anthropometric data from approximately 22,000 Swiss mercenaries born between c. 1725 and c. 1865. Analyzing mercenary data presents two key challenges: left-truncation due to height requirements and potential selection...

How do minimum wages affect informality? We study the near-doubling of the real minimum wage from 2000 to 2009 in Brazil, where 46% of the workforce is informal. Using labor force surveys covering the informal sector, we show the minimum wage exhibits near full passthrough to informal employees...

Amid escalating climate risks and uneven decarbonization trajectories, understanding the distributional determinants of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is essential for guiding Asia toward equitable and sustainable development. Anchored in the Environmental Kuznets Curve framework and the...

Obtaining comparable poverty estimates over time is critical for monitoring poverty trends and informing effective poverty reduction policies. Yet hardly any developing countries could construct consistent poverty trends over extended time periods due to changes to the consumption survey...

Subjective wellbeing is the term used to describe an individual's satisfaction with their life and standard of living. The research in this area is challenging because it is a subjective expression of the respondent's feelings, and individuals may have different ideas or preferences. On the...

A comprehensive understanding of economic deprivation requires examining income, the value of unpaid household services, and leisure. These concepts can be understood either through subjective utility or objective indicators such as measurable expenditures and time use, and much depends on how...

This paper uses cross-sectional surveys of households over 2007-21 from Thailand's Socio-Economic Expenditure Survey to conduct one of the first investigations of the impacts of climatic variability on two key statistics characterizing the distribution of welfare in Thailand: the mean and the...

This paper examines the welfare effects of Tanzania's 2021 levy on mobile money transfers, a policy that sharply increased transaction costs in a country where mobile money is the primary channel for financial access and remittances. Using two waves of the Tanzania National Panel Survey (2014/15...

We provide new evidence that inflation inequality surged during the 2021–2023 cost-of living crisis, driven by systematically higher price growth for lower-quality goods disproportionately consumed by poorer households. While substitution in response to relative price changes helped mitigate...

Material deprivation, defined as the inability to afford essential goods and services, is a key determinant of psychological well-being across Europe. While prior research links deprivation to lower well-being and diminished institutional trust, few or no studies to date have examined how trust...

"Background to the study and data Basis: - The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused a massive refugee movement since February 24, 2022, with mostly women and children fleeing to European countries, including Germany. Around one million people from Ukraine have now been living in Germany for...

Utilising the EU-SILC modules 2009, 2014, and 2021, this note analyses child-specific material deprivation in the EU Member States. Besides the statistics on the most frequently lacked items, the child-specific material deprivation intensity (i.e., the number of lacked items) and the...

The essay traces the evolution of my academic career through three stages: as a Habsburg economic historian, an anthropometric historian, and as a humanistic economist exposing the Achilles hills of mainstream economics and tracing the roots of the rise of the current right-wing populist...

Measures of inequality typically rely on price indices formulated for a representative consumer, falsely assuming an identical consumption basket across households within the country. However, consumption patterns differ across households; hence, the changes in price levels might have different...

This report summarizes the findings from a survey on sustainable livelihoods of refugees in Rwanda. The survey was designed to assess the living conditions, economic status, and overall well-being of refugees, and structured around the indicators included in a self-reliance measure for refugees...

Understanding the complex and multidimensional nature of poverty is essential for designing effective and targeted policy interventions in rural Ethiopia. This study examined the determinants of multidimensional poverty in Bilate River Basin in South Ethiopia, employing cross-sectional household...

The Lao economy faces increased challenges from currency depreciation and high inflation. Economic recovery from COVID-19 has been gradual, undermined by macroeconomic instability and external factors. The combination of the need to service large external debts, high import prices, and limited...

This paper investigates the role that access to livelihood assets plays in reducing vulnerability to lower levels of well-being, especially for camp-based refugees. We develop the multidimensional vulnerability index using the 2019 Kakuma socioeconomic survey to provide a comprehensive and...

Poverty is a global problem associated with deprivation; it is marked by the lack of access to the minimum social needs for people's integration and well-being. This work aims to measure the relationships between multidimensional poverty and unidimensional poverty in Brazil from 2016 to 2022....

Brazil has committed to a 43 percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 2005 and 2030 - mainly through increasing the share of sustainable biofuels and clean energy in the energy mix, and through forest restoration and reafforestation. Sustainable investments in the forestry...

This paper examines the evolution of the biological standard of living using anthropometric data from approximately 22,000 Swiss mercenaries born between c. 1725 and c. 1865. Analyzing mercenary data presents two key challenges: left-truncation due to height requirements and potential selection...

As Asia faces the dual challenges of rapid economic expansion and mounting environmental pressures, the region's ability to balance growth with sustainability has become a focal point of global discourse. With increasing energy demands, escalating CO₂ emissions, and widening income inequality,...

This paper aims to reassess multidimensional poverty measurement including the ease of doing business as an additional indicator with the existing measurements for 81 countries by human development, and identify how multidimensional poverty has changed during a very short period from 2014 to...

The living standard of a population is influenced by numerous factors, which, in addition, may change over time. Transport can be one of them as it acts as a mediator for other factors: it influences the price and supply of essential foods; it affects wages and income; it has an impact on the...