A group of scholars converging on a common and socially relevant economic theme of research, that of households' welfare and poverty, met several times in the last two years to discuss the research progress and the opportunity to bring to gether for publication the research so far accomplished. They shared a research project supported by a grant from the former Italian Ministero dell'Universita e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (MURST) now Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR): The Equiva lence Scales in the Measurement of Households' Welfare: Statistical, Economic and Demographic Analysis. The decisive meeting, an international seminar on the topics, was hosted by the University of Florence, siege of the national coordinator of this project. When one think of Florence, it is inevitable to think of the unfolding of Ren aissance, and reciprocally. th To the eyes of a traveller who had arrived to Florence in the 15 century, the city would have appeared as a sort of El Dorado, similarly to what would have occurred to the first conquerors of the South America's lands, so much astonishing were the richness of arts and the opulence of life. The flourishing of painting and sculpture had not equal all over the world and was reaching tops never made equal before. Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello and later on Leonardo and Michelangelo, were the artistic and intellectual genius that enlightened beauty lovers princes.....

This collection of essays covers a diverse set of topics related to household behavior and welfare. Prices play a key role in several of the essays, particularly the distributional implications of price movements, and the effects of changes in relative prices on inequality and poverty. This book shows the shift in the literature on prices from being an exclusively macro topic featuring the study of inflation and cross-country comparisons to one that is firmly rooted in micro theory-based analysis of household behavior. It also includes recent developments in the poverty measurement literature, documenting the shift from the exclusively money metric and unidimensional poverty measures to multidimensional poverty encompassing a wider view of deprivation. Largely, but not exclusively, focusing on India, the book also features global comparisons of welfare. Intra country spatial comparisons along with cross country comparisons of household behavior and welfare feature in several of the essays in this book. The book also compares the effects of selected public delivery schemes in India on the health of its children. It is a useful resource for researchers and serves as reading material for advanced graduate courses on development in India and elsewhere.

The measurement of household welfare is one of the most compelling yet demanding areas in economics. To place the analysis of inequality and poverty within an economic framework where individuals are making decisions about current and lifetime incomes and expenditures is a difficult task, made all the more challenging by the complexity of the decision-making process in which households are involved and the variety of constraints they face. This 1994 book examines the conceptual and practical difficulties of making inferences from observed behaviour. It addresses the problems of making comparisons across a range of very different households and discusses how data for such comparisons should be collected. The contributions, from experts from Europe, North America and Australia, have the unifying theme that there is a strong relationship between theoretical concepts from microeconomics and the appropriate use of micro data in evaluating household welfare.

Demand studies and understanding consumer behavior remain two of the most important areas of analysis by practicing applied economists and econometricians. This book presents research on the estimation of demand systems and the measurement of consumer preferences.

Using data from several countries, including Cote d'Ivoire, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Thailand, this book analyzes household survey data from developing countries and illustrates how such data can be used to cast light on a range of short-term and long-term policy issues.

Contains 15 papers, which were presented at the Fourth Meeting of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, Catania, Sicily, July 2011. This title includes measuring segregation, welfare and liberty, the use of influence functions in distributional analysis, and the axiomatic approach to multidimensional inequality.

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.

What new theories, evidence, explanations, and policies have shaped our studies of income distribution in the 21st century? Editors Tony Atkinson and Francois Bourguignon assemble the expertise of leading authorities in this survey of substantive issues. In two volumes they address subjects that were not covered in Volume 1 (2000), such as education, health and experimental economics; and subjects that were covered but where there have been substantial new developments, such as the historical study of income inequality and globalization. Some chapters discuss future growth areas, such as inheritance, the links between inequality and macro-economics and finance, and the distributional implications of climate change. They also update empirical advances and major changes in the policy environment. - The volumes define and organize key areas of income distribution studies - Contributors focus on identifying newly developing questions and opportunities for future research - The authoritative articles emphasize the ways that income mobility and inequality studies have recently gained greater political significance