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The objectives of this study are to identify the costs of schooling borne by parents, to assess the extent to which these costs place a financial burden on poor and rural parents and to examine the impact of parental income on student performance. The study surveyed both the rural and urban children in Malaysian secondary schools. The evidence underscores the importance of schooling expenditure and the distribution of the availability of schooling facilities to all. Providing sufficient financial assistance such as subsidies and scholarships for poor students should continue to be very high on policy agenda.

Economic decline in recent years has been strongly felt by European countries. Once with currency devaluation, the recession has caused rapid deterioration of incomes, and marked the collapse of financial markets. Furthermore, the difficulties encountered in industry and services have led to a dramatic decrease in investment and a sharp rise in unemployment. Severe effects of financial crisis were felt around the world, affecting both countries with strong economies as well as less developed countries. Nonprofit organizations have tried to maintain their positions, focusing on reducing losses and attract external funding. This paper aims to discuss a topical issue for the economic environment in Romania, examining the impact of recession on the nonprofit sector, from several perspectives. Thus, the article discusses the situation of social organizations in different regions of Europe and their relationship with the final consumer. The paper debates the problem of a changing European economy, examining the extent to which a country’s prosperity influences the development of local nonprofit organizations. Thus, the research highlights the differences between nonprofit organizations belonging to : Northern Central Europe, Southern Central Europe and Eurasia. Countries in these regions were analyzed as a group, considering an average level of prosperity for every category. The results capture the limited possibilities of development for nonprofit organizations in less developed European regions. Funding opportunities remain the main problem of nonprofit organizations. Therefore, the paper highlights the importance of resources management in social activities, and suggests future directions for action, both for nonprofit organizations and consumers.

The current contribution presents poverty indicators for West and East Germany for the years 1995 and 2009. The analysis is based on the two corresponding waves of the GSOEP. We only consider households with at least one senior citizen aged 65 or above. Furthermore, we distinguish between male and female pensioners. In the first part the weighted equivalized household income is calculated as well as various statistical measures such as the 20%- and 80%-percentile, the 80/20-ratio and the 90/10-ratio of the income distribution of senior citizen households. In an additional step we also present and discuss the main sources of income such households have. In the second part of the contribution we focus on social indicators with respect to the satisfaction with income and the current living conditions as well as the expected situation in five years. As the results show, old age poverty has increased in both parts in Germany with East German women being an exception. With respect to the future, most elder people look optimistically into the future.

In this paper we want to present, in both a succinct and a theoretical way, the possible relation between economic liberalization, human development and standard of living in the present society based, more than ever, on knowledge.It is known that economic liberalization is one of the phenomena that have manifested themselves in increasingly active manner in recent decades so, nobody can deny its benefits especially on human development - economic and social main objective of all states, regional and global formations. Actually, the progress in human development translates into improved population standard of living. A better life, a decent standard of living for the greater share of people is the real proof of the effectiveness of economic and social processes including liberalization, economic growth and development and the motivation for future efforts to be made in this direction. Our theoretical approach is made on the basis of some specific indicators characteristic to the analyzed processes, indicators compiled and made available by various international organizations in the field. These statistical figures shall enable a comparison between the situation of some representative countries, including Romania.

The objective of this paper is to estimate the impact of medium- and long-term participation in microcredit programs. It utilizes a new, and large, panel dataset collected from treatment and control households from 1997 to 2005. The data enables us to identify continuing participants in the program as well as newcomers and leavers. We employ different estimation strategies including difference-in-difference-in-difference and propensity score matching methods to control for selection bias. The impact estimates indicate that the benefits from microcredit vary more than proportionately with the duration of participation in a program. Larger benefits are realized from longer-term participation, and the benefits continue to accrue beyond departure from the program. The findings indicate the need to observe longer periods of participation to provide a reliable basis for assessing the effectiveness of microcredit lending. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

In this paper we tried to identify the behavior related to contemporary social protection systems, taking into account the socio - demographic community in a time of economic – financial crisis. We analyzed each of the four identified social protection systems and we determined their positive and negative parts, proposing for the European social protection system a strategy which will increase workforce competitiveness in the world.

The world is aging. Scholars have recognized this and have investigated potential intergenerational conflict attributable to resource allocation as elderly retirees consume greater portions of a nation’s GDP. Nations with greater numbers of elderly have less productive economies. What has not been studied in detail is the fact that the rates at which nations age differ from nation to nation and over time. This paper provides a simulation that shows how the timing differences will impact age distributions in the world’s 25 largest economies. The simulation shows how elderly populations will consume increasing portions of national GDP over time and how these impacts will differ from one nation to and other. Younger nations without elderly support burdens will enjoy a competitive advantage in international markets compared to nations with large numbers of elderly. Since the timing of the elderly burden differs nation to nation and because developed nations will find it necessary to be competitive economically, there will be constant pressure on all elderly nations to reduce support for their elderly in order to remain competitive. This could ‘unwind’ economic support for the elderly worldwide. We explore a number of potential public policy responses that a nation could use to minimize the pressure to reduce support for the elderly while remaining economically competitive in international markets. - Il mondo invecchia. Gli studiosi hanno riconosciuto questo fenomeno e hanno esaminato il potenziale conflitto intergenerazionale attribuibile all’allocazione delle risorse nel momento in cui gli anziani, andando in pensione, sottraggono quote più ampie del PIL di un paese. Le economie dei paesi che hanno una maggiore quota di anziani tra la popolazione sono meno produttive. Ciò che non è stato esaminato in dettaglio sono le differenze, tra i diversi paesi, nei tassi di invecchiamento ed il diverso momento in cui l’invecchiamento si verifica. Questo studio fornisce una simulazione che dimostra come le popolazioni di 25 tra le maggiori economie mondiali invecchieranno in tempi diversi nei diversi paesi. Tale simulazione evidenzia come una popolazione più anziana consumi quote di PIL sempre maggiori nel tempo e come questo fenomeno differisca tra un paese e l’altro. I paesi più giovani che non devono sopportare l’onere causato dall’assistenza agli anziani godranno di maggiori vantaggi in termini di competitività sui mercati internazionali, rispetto a quei paesi che contano invece molti anziani tra la popolazione. Poiché il momento in cui si verifica la necessità di fornire assistenza agli anziani è diverso da paese a paese ci saranno costanti pressioni su tutti i paesi ‘vecchi’ affinchè si riduca il sostentamento agli anziani per mantenere la competitività. Nel lavoro vengono esaminate diverse politiche pubbliche finalizzate a fronteggiare le problematiche connesse a queste previsioni.

GDP is a widely used category, which measures economic growth, and the government for public policy decisions uses that, and so on. A well-known fact is, however, that GDP is not a measure of economic welfare. This paper explores weaknesses of the GDP concept: market failures in the measurement of GDP, and (2) the conceptual distortions or limitations viewed from the viewpoint of welfare. Then we deals with one of the recent developments of welfare concern, the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), and the question.

En este estudio se analiza el perfil de la pobreza de los jóvenes en España desde un punto de vista multidimensional. El enfoque adoptado se concreta en la estimación del riesgo de pobreza, tres indicadores de privación material (vivienda, retrasos en pagos y carencias materiales) y uno de exclusión educativa, sobre una muestra de jóvenes extraída de la Encuesta de Condiciones de Vida (ECV). La metodología utilizada consiste en modelos de elección discreta y de recuento. Entre los resultados más relevantes destaca la importancia de la composición del hogar, el nivel educativo y la situación en el mercado de trabajo del joven y otras características como la discapacidad y la nacionalidad en la determinación del riesgo de pobreza, privación material y exclusión educativa.

Household real disposable income saw no increase within the fi rst eight months in 2014 relative to the corresponding period last year, whereas in the period between January 2013 and August 2013 it increased more than 4% relative to the corresponding period in 2012. The level of inequality slightly improved in H1 2014 compared to H1 2013.

The slowdown of the population’s income growth rate that had started in the first half year of 2013 continued through January 2014. Due to the implementation of measures designed to raise the salary level in the budget-funded sphere in accordance with the President of the Russian Federation’s Executive Order of 7 May 2012, No 597 ‘On Measures Aimed at the Implementation of Government Social Policy’, the highest growth rate in 2013 was displayed by salaries in the spheres of education, healthcare and social services. In 2013, the planned salary levels were practically achieved for certain categories of employees in the budget-funded sphere; however, the salary levels in municipal institutions are still below the planned targets.

Most studies that explore the impact of relative standing on subjective well-being use objective measures of the individual’s relative position, such as the mean income of the reference group or the individual’s ranking in the relevant income distribution. In this paper, using a new household survey from South Africa, we are able to derive subjective measures of relative standing, as information is collected on individuals’ perceptions of where they rank in the income distribution. We find considerable differences between objective and subjective measures of an individual’s relative ranking. Furthermore, our results suggest that an individual’s perceived relative status has a significantly larger effect on subjective well-being than objective measures of relative status based on reported income. We also examine the effects on subjective well-being of how individuals perceive their relative position in the income distribution to have changed since childhood, and what they expect their relative position to be in the future. We find that future upward mobility has a smaller effect than upward mobility compared to one’s past, suggesting that life satisfaction is influenced more by what has been achieved than by anticipated achievements.

I critically review recent studies that estimate those costs of violence and conflict that can emerge among organized political groupings, such as states, religious and ethnic organizations, guerillas and paramilitaries. The review includes studies that estimate direct and indirect costs due to internal conflicts (civil wars and other lower-level conflicts), terrorism, and external conflicts, including military spending. There are a number of key theoretical concerns on what counts as a cost, and, depending on the methods and evidence used, estimated costs vary widely. However, even minimum estimates are economically significant, especially for low-income countries. This is even more so when the costs of different types of organized conflict and violence are aggregated.

The Effects of Remittances on Household Consumption, Education Attendance and Living Standards: the Case of Colombia Carlos Medina and Lina Cardona Abstract: We assess whether international remittances affect Colombian household’s expenditure composition and demand of education. We exploit the migratory wave and institutional barriers to migration that occurred during the late 1990s, identifying the effect of remittances on expenditure composition. The findings suggest a positive effect on education, with beneficiary households spending about 10 percent more of total expenditure on education than non-beneficiary households. In contrast, no effect was found on enrolment rates. However, the analysis indicates an important effect on the probability of attending a private, rather than a public educational institution. Additionally, this study finds no effects on consumption, investment and health expenditure, although remittances do have salient effects on living standards. Key words: International Remittances, International Migration, Safety Net, Consumption Composition. JEL Classification: F22, I31, P36. El efecto de las remesas en Colombia sobre el consumo de los hogares, la asistencia escolar y el nivel de vida Resumen: Este artículo evalúa si las remesas internacionales afectan la composición del gasto de los hogares y su demanda por educación, para lo cual se estudia la ola migratoria que tuvo lugar a finales de 1990 y las barreras institucionales a la migración. Se encuentra evidencia empírica de un efecto positivo en la educación, con hogares beneficiarios gastando alrededor de diez por ciento más del gasto total en educación que los no beneficiarios. Aunque no se encontró efecto en las tasas de asistencia, se encontró un efecto importante en la probabilidad de asistir a una institución privada en lugar de una pública. Por otro lado, no se encuentra efectos sobre consumo, inversión o salud, pero sí efectos importantes en los estándares de vida. Palabras clave: remesas internacionales, migración internacional, red de protección, composición del consumo. Clasificación JEL: F22, I31, P36. Les effets des transferts d’argent en provenance de l’étranger sur la consommation des ménages, leur éducation et leur niveau de vie : Une étude pour la Colombie Résumé: Cet article analyse les effets des transferts d’argent en provenance de l’étranger sur les dépenses des ménages ainsi que sur leur demande d’accès à l’éducation. Pour ce faire, nous étudions la vague d’émigration qui a eu lieu à la fin des années 90 ainsi que leurs barrières institutionnelles. Les résultats montrent que les ménages qui perçoivent ces transferts d’argent dépensent 10% de plus sur leur éducation, c’est-à-dire qu’il y a un effet positif des transfers d’argent en provenance de l’étranger sur l’éducation. Même si nous ne constatons pas un effet sur les taux d’assiduité à classe, on trouve un effet assez important sur la probabilité de s’inscrire dans un établissement éducatif privée au lieu d’un établissement publique. Finalement, nous trouvons un effet positif sur le niveau de vie mais ne trouvons pas des effets sur la consommation, l’investissement ou bien sur l’accès à la santé.

The past decade has witnessed an explosion of interest in the scientific study of happiness. Economists, in particular, find that happiness increases in income but decreases in income aspirations, and this work prompts examination of how aspirations form and adapt over time. This paper presents results from the first experimental study of how multiple factors -- past payments, social comparisons, and expectations -- influence aspiration formation and reported satisfaction. I find that expectations and social comparisons significantly affect reported satisfaction, and that subjects care relatively more about social comparisons once they have achieved a satisfactory outcome. These findings support an aspirations-based theory of happiness.

The authors sketch a framework for monitoring macroeconomic activity in real-time and push it in new directions. In particular, they focus not only on real activity, which has received most attention to date, but also on inflation and its interaction with real activity. As for the recent recession, the authors find that (1) it likely ended around July 2009; (2) its most extreme aspects concern a real activity decline that was unusually long but less unusually deep, and an inflation decline that was unusually deep but brief; and (3) its real activity and inflation interactions were strongly positive, consistent with an adverse demand shock.

For decades, the US public and private sectors have committed substantial resources towards cancer research, but the societal payoff has not been well-understood. We quantify the value of recent gains in cancer survival, and analyze the distribution of value among various stakeholders. Between 1988 and 2000, life expectancy for cancer patients increased by roughly four years, and the average willingness-to-pay for these survival gains was roughly $322,000. Improvements in cancer survival during this period created 23 million additional life-years and roughly $1.9 trillion of additional social value, implying that the average life-year was worth approximately $82,000 to its recipient. Health care providers and pharmaceutical companies appropriated 5-19% of this total, with the rest accruing to patients. The share of value flowing to patients has been rising over time. These calculations suggest that from the patient's point of view, the rate of return to R&D investments against cancer has been substantial.

A number of prominent diseases are influenced by health behaviors. For example, it is well-known that the decision to smoke comes with considerable risks of developing smoking-related ailments such as lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. Obesity is another health condition that can be costly. It is associated with increased risk for diseases such as coronary heart disease and diabetes (Centers for Disease Control 2009). Nationally, it is estimated that about one-third of the U.S. population is obese, and estimates suggest that obesity costs society anywhere from $27 to $47 billion in health care expenditures annually (Centers for Disease Control 2009, National Center for Health Statistics 2008). Research suggests that changing individuals’ diets and getting them to exercise would help to reduce the prevalence of obesity in society (Melayne McInnes and Judith Shinogle, 2009). Smoking and obesity provide just two examples of cases in which the nation’s burden of disease is influence by behaviors that its citizens engage in. Because the United States spends a large share of GDP on health care each year, understanding the determinants of health behaviors is important, as it may allow scholars to identify ways to reduce these costs. This paper examines the relationship between individuals’ health behaviors and the “non-cognitive” skills that individuals possess. In the past decade the economics discipline has seen a burst of interest in human capabilities that contribute to labor market productivity beyond the usual foci of attention—levels of education and learning by doing. The collection of personality traits, soft-skills, incentive-enhancing preferences, and socio-emotional factors that economists are now studying has been loosely grouped together under the heading “non-cognitive” skills.1 While the term may be something of a misnomer because many of the worker attributes that the authors writing in this subfield are interested in require reasoning or cognition, the skills of interest have been found to be important determinants of labor market success (James Heckman, Jora Stixrud, and Sergio Urzua 2006; Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne 2001).2James Heckman (2007) has stated that these socio-emotional attributes--as non-cognitive skills are sometimes called--are also likely to affect health behaviors. This paper tests this hypothesis. It provides a theoretical and an empirical analysis of the connection between socio-emotional attributes and the choices that individuals make about health. It uses data from a large, nationally representative dataset to analyze the relationships.

In this paper we identify the factors that have influenced average life satisfaction for Croatians based on data collected in reports from 1999 and 2006. Our analysis of the data from the European Values Survey (EVS) reveals that in 1999 life satisfaction was higher for people who were married, those who were employed, and those who had an income between 5, 001 and 8, 000 Croatian kuna (HRK) per month. Life satisfaction was U-shaped in age, minimizing around the age of 50. There appeared to be little correlation between life satisfaction and education level. Based on our analysis of the 2006 data from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), we find that in 2006 life satisfaction was higher for people who were married, those who were employed, those who were out of the labor force, those with a university degree, and those with higher incomes. The impact of age in 2006 was U-shaped as it was in the 1999 data, minimizing around the age of 58. The data from both years strongly supports the view that life satisfaction rises with GDP per capita in the county in which a respondent resides.

The study of multidimensional deprivation has become one of the most relevant lines of research in the analysis of low-income households. The search for significant relationships between multidimensional deprivation and income poverty has been a central issue and most empirical studies have found a very weak link. This paper aims at examining the possibility of an aggregation bias in national studies, which could conceal the diversity of experiences and patterns to be found in the different regions. Latent class models are used to define deprivation indices and the Spanish Survey on Income and Living Conditions is used. The results seem to show that the absence of significant relationships between both phenomena also appears when the sample of household is disaggregated regionally. Nonetheless, the decomposition of these two phenomena’s determinants reveals some common explanatory factors.

Cost-effectiveness analysis of alternative medical treatments relies on having a measure of effectiveness, and many regard the quality adjusted life year (QALY) to be the current ‘gold standard.’ In order to compute QALYs, we require a suitable system for describing a person's health state, and a utility measure to value the quality of life associated with each possible state. There are a number of different health state descriptive systems, and we focus here on one known as the EQ-5D. Data for estimating utilities for different health states have a number of features that mean care is necessary in statistical modelling. There is interest in the extent to which valuations of health may differ between different countries and cultures, but few studies have compared preference values of health states obtained from different countries. This article applies a nonparametric model to estimate and compare EQ-5D health state valuation data obtained from two countries using Bayesian methods. The data set is the US and UK EQ-5D valuation studies where a sample of 42 states defined by the EQ-5D was valued by representative samples of the general population from each country using the time trade-off technique. We estimate a utility function across both countries which explicitly accounts for the differences between them, and is estimated using the data from both countries. The article discusses the implications of these results for future applications of the EQ-5D and for further work in this field. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The article describes estimating method of innovation impact on welfare of country Applied within the method model represents the translog function for GDP per capita, which describing parameters contain, along with «clas-sic» macro-indicators, innovative development indicators of country Constructed by principal component method innovative development indicators approximate innovativeness of two production factors — labor resources of country and its capital Calculations are based on International Institute for Management Development annual data Implied for several countries’ clusters the model reveals the dependence and the impact of arrangements for in-creasing country’s innovativeness on its welfare

We apply an extension of the Rothbarth approach to estimate the share of household resources accruing to children (i.e., the cost of children) in Ireland. The method also allows us to identify the economies of scale in the household and indifference scales in Lewbel (2003)’s sense. A practical aspect of the present approach is that it does not require price variation. The identification of the children's share requires the observation of adult-specific goods as in the traditional Rothbarth method. We compare our findings to previous results for Ireland.

Die Einkommensgegensätze zwischen ärmeren und reicheren Haushalten nehmen in Deutschland seit der Wiedervereinigung zu. Zwar reduziert sich diese Einkommenspolarisierung in konjunkturell günstigen Phasen mit starken Beschäftigungszuwächsen. Danach aber steigt sie umso schneller wieder an. Im längerfristigen Trend ist einerseits nicht nur die Zahl der ärmeren Haushalte stetig gewachsen - sie wurden im Durchschnitt auch immer ärmer. Auf der anderen Seite gibt es im Trend immer mehr Reichere, die im Durchschnitt auch immer reicher werden. Dieser Gegensatz wird von den Menschen nicht nur als besonders ungerecht empfunden, sondern er schürt auch die Verunsicherung der Mittelschicht. Im Krisenjahr 2009 nahm zwar der Anteil der Haushalte mit hohen Einkommen ab. Das Durchschnittseinkommen der verbliebenen reichen Haushalte aber stieg weiter. Im unteren Einkommensbereich wirkte sich auch dank der unterstützenden Arbeitsmarktmaßnahmen die Finanz- und Wirtschaftkrise bislang kaum negativ aus.

One of the central topics in recent empirical work on subjective well-being is that of comparisons to a reference group, over a variety of domains of economic and social life. One such reference group is neighbours. Any resulting spatial spillovers that are identified have potential implications for the welfare-mamixising degree of spatial segregation. In this paper, we summarize some recent findings with respect to geographical comparisons of income, unemployment, health and religion, and present some new results regarding spatial spillovers in marriage. The resulting predictions regarding spatial segregation differ sharply according to the domain under consideration. While work in this area remains very preliminary, subjective well-being data may well help to both identify spillovers from neighbours, and inform about individualsÕ location decisions.

Une aide publique des grands événements sportifs ne peut être justifiée par une seule étude d’impact économique. Il est nécessaire de mesurer aussi l’utilité sociale dans le cadre d’une analyse coûts/bénéfices. Cela permet de comparer les coûts engendrés pour la communauté d’accueil avec les bénéfices pour la population en termes de bien-être social. Pourtant, il y a toujours une forte demande d’études d’impact économique de la part des pouvoirs publics avant l’organisation de grands événements sportifs, alors que les études coûts/bénéfices sont quasiment inexistantes, d’où des décisions peu rationnelles en la matière. On peut même supposer que les résultats des études d’impact économique aient servi à justifier des décisions prises sur la base de considérations essentiellement politiques. Dans cet article, pour rendre compte à la fois de l’impact économique et de l’utilité sociale de l’organisation d’un grand évènement sportif, nous proposons un test de légitimité que nous illustrons avec l’exemple de la Coupe du Monde de Rugby de 2007 en France. Abstract - The legitimacy of allocating public funds and common resources to the organization of mega sporting events cannot be solely based on an economic impact study. The analysis should also measure the social utility that is generated, and, within the framework of a cost-benefit analysis, compare the costs of the project for the community and the benefits people derive from it in terms of social well-being. Nevertheless, there is a paradox with a strong demand for economic impact studies by public decision makers, while hardly any costs-benefit analyses exist. It is very likely that the lack of such studies has driven to inappropriate public decisions over the past years. Sometimes, economic impact studies have been used, ex post, to justify decisions made on a political level. Here we propose a legitimacy test of such an important event, illustrated through the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France.

The visibility of environmental problems and the increasing awareness of associated consequences have made environmental issues salient in Zambia. The purpose of this study was to investigate correlations between the social and psychological influences affecting college students in Zambia, and the behaviours perceived by them to be appropriately environmentally friendly. The underlying social and psychological factors that would determine individuals' attitudinal responses toward appropriate environmental behaviour were assessed. The study attempted to measure behavioural tendencies towards environmental conservation. Behaviour involving energy and water conservation (EW) was consistently rated as the most important, and appropriate category of environmental behaviour, whereas social and political action (SP) was viewed as the least favourable behaviour according to the respondents in Zambia. The respondents who were older in the graduate level of the study and had frequently contact with environmental education activities and courses were more likely to hold positive behavioural tendencies toward environmental conservation in general.

Income disparities between poorer and richer households in Germany have been widening since reunification. Although this income polarisation is reduced during economically favourable periods by strong growth in employment, once the good times are over, it rises all the faster. The longer-term trend not only shows that the number of poorer households is steadily increasing, but also that on average they are getting poorer. On the flip side, the trend is toward an increasing number of richer individuals, whose average wealth is steadily increasing. This contrast is not only felt to be highly unfair, but also creates uncertainty among the middle class. Although the year of the financial crisis, 2009, saw the number of high-income households decrease, the average incomes of the remaining rich households continued to rise. As a result of job market measures, the lower income bracket has scarcely been affected by the financial and economic crisis.

This paper takes a different tack in addressing one of the fundamental questions in economics: what are the factors that determine the distribution of jobs and wages? In Adam Smith%u2019s classic formulation, and in much of the subsequent literature, wage levels have been used to estimate the values of job characteristics ("compensating" or "equalizing" differentials). There are econometric problems with this approach, principally caused by unmeasured differences in talents and aptitudes that enable people of high ability to have jobs with both high wages and good working conditions, thus understating the value of working conditions. We bypass this difficulty by estimating the extent to which incomes and job characteristics influence direct measures of life satisfaction from three large and recent Canadian surveys. The well-being results show strikingly large values for non-financial job characteristics, especially workplace trust and other measures of the quality of workplace social capital. The compensating differentials estimated for the quality of workplace social capital are so large as to suggest that they do not reflect a full equilibrium. Thus the current situation probably reflects the existence of unrecognized opportunities for managers and employees to alter workplace environments, or for workers to change jobs, so as to increase both life satisfaction and workplace efficiency.

I discuss the measurement of world poverty and inequality, with particular attention to the role of purchasing power parity (PPP) price indexes from the International Comparison Project. Global inequality increased with the latest revision of the ICP, and this reduced the global poverty line relative to the US dollar. The recent large increase of nearly half a billion poor people came from an inappropriate updating of the global poverty line, not from the ICP revisions. Even so, PPP comparisons between widely different countries rest on weak theoretical and empirical foundations. I argue for wider use of self-reports from international monitoring surveys, and for a global poverty line that is truly denominated in US dollars. (JEL C43, D31, I31, I32, F31)

Women suffer from severe income losses after partnership dissolution. This finding has been confirmed in many international comparative studies. Men on the other hand do not experience income decreases to the same extent. This article uses the European Household Panel (ECHP) to look at income dynamics after relationship dissolution. First, income declines are modelled. Second, the article looks at the two main strategies to cope with the economic consequences of a separation :repartnering and (re)employment. Using a multilevel growth model, the (relative) effect of both strategies is assessed in a cross-national longitudinal perspective. While men do not benefit financially form cohabiting with a new partner at all, repartnering proves to outweigh the benefits of re-entering the labour force or increasing the working hours for most women., Numéro Spécial "Analyse des revenus individuels et de la dépendance financière des femmes et des hommes" Editrices :Danièle Meulders et Sile O'Dorchai, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This study fleshes out the picture of poverty and the poor in Greece, presenting findings with important implications for the Greek social inclusion strategy. Assessing poverty using both monetary and non-monetary dimensions of well-being it becomes evident that, for certain population groups, poverty risk is associated with deprivation risk (multidimensional nature of poverty). Focusing on the age dimension, the stochastic dominance analysis indicates that old age income poverty in Greece appears to be remarkably robust and is not simply due to the choice of poverty lines. Moreover, what is at work statistically is that old age income has an effective 'floor' which is constraining inequality among the poor. Such a floor is not evident in the case of the younger group whose distribution of income below the poverty line is much more dispersed. These findings support the argument that much of the effect of the old age poverty alleviation policies over the ten last years in Greece is concentrated on the formation of 'an effective floor' for the elderly population rather than on decreasing poverty rates.

L’article présente une analyse sexuée de l’évolution de la relation de réciprocité qui lie les personnes bénéficiant de l’aide sociale et l’État. La contrepartie exigée en retour de la solidarité nationale n’est pas de même nature selon le sexe de l’allocataire ni selon son statut familial, ce qui constitue une forme de discrimination. Alors que pour les femmes, elle a longtemps reposé sur leur rôle de « mère avant tout », pour les hommes elle se fonde sur leur rôle de « pourvoyeur de ressources ». Le passage du Revenu minimum d’insertion et de l’Allocation de parent isolé au Revenu de solidarité active en 2009 a impliqué un renforcement des obligations d’insertion dans l’emploi pour les allocataires. Le modèle familial traditionnel en sort néanmoins renforcé, car le resserrement de la contrainte ne concerne pas les femmes avec enfants vivant en couple ; leur rôle de femmes au foyer les dispense d’une recherche d’emploi à tout prix. Mais lorsqu’elles se séparent de leur conjoint, elles redeviennent alors une cible clé des politiques d’activation. This article takes a gender approach to the analysis of changes in the relationship of reciprocity that links the State and people receiving social benefits targeted at poverty reduction. The counterpart required in exchange for national solidarity is not the same for men and women beneficiaries and varies with family status, which induces a discrimination. Whereas what is important for women has long been their role as “mothers above all”, for men it is their integration into the world of work. The integration in 2009 of the French minimum income benefit (RMI) and the lone parent allowance (API) into what is now called the active solidarity income (RSA) led to strengthening job integration requirements for beneficiaries. Nevertheless, the traditional model seems to have been spared by the tightening of requirements, as women with children who live in a couple do not have their employability questioned to the same extent as other beneficiaries. Their role as housewives excludes them from a logic of employment at any cost. But as soon as they are separated from their partner, they once again become a target of activation policies.

This paper critically examines the various approaches to the measurement of individual well-being and social welfare that have been considered for the construction of alternatives to GDP. Special attention is devoted to recent developments in the analysis of sustainability, in the study of happiness, in the theory of social choice and fair allocation, and in the capability approach. It is suggested in the conclusion that, although convergence toward a consensual approach is not impossible, for the moment not one but three alternatives to GDP are worth developing. (JEL I31, E23, E01)

This paper examines inequality and welfare in food consumption expenditure in Pakistan. The indices are derived on the basis of Sen’s welfare function by employing HIES, 2005-06. The empirical results show that inequality and welfare varied widely in urban and rural areas. It can be seen that the concentration index of non essential/luxury food components are unevenly distributed over the total expenditure in favour of rich families. The price elasticity of welfare indicates that rising prices of food components have negative effect on the aggregate welfare. The present analysis provides a basis for determining the magnitude of inequality and welfare that can help in designing appropriate policies. JEL classification: D12, D13, D31, I31 Keywords: Food Consumption, Inequality, Welfare, Elasticity

Throughout adulthood and old age, levels of well-being appear to remain relatively stable. In this chapter, we argue that focusing on a phase of life during which this positive picture does not necessarily prevail promises to help us better understand between-person disparities in the progression of late-life well-being. In a first step, we review empirical evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel and other large-scale longitudinal data sets to demonstrate that ubiquitous reports of a "stability-despite-loss phenomenon" of well-being do not generalize into years of life immediately preceding death. Instead, mean-level representations of the end of life are characterized by a rapid deterioration in well-being. In a second step, we highlight the vast heterogeneity in how people experience the last years and consider the role of biopsychosocial individual difference factors to account for such disparities. The select factors reviewed here include socio-demographic characteristics, cognitive fitness, pathology, and disability. In a third step, we argue that macro-contextual factors such as the social, service, and physical characteristics of the communities and societies people are living and dying in also profoundly shape the nature and progression of individual late-life well-being. Our conceptual reasoning forecasts some of the insights that can be gained by pursuing this line of research, but also underscores the challenges researchers must deal with.

This paper proposes a new method for the measurement of the quality of relational life. Building on the recent literature on the determinants of subjective well-being, we use implicit valuations estimated from microeconometric life-satisfaction equations to weigh and aggregate scores on several dimensions of relational life. We apply the proposed method to a large sample of individuals from 82 countries, to construct indicators that focus on three dimensions of interpersonal relations: friends, family, and society. We use the constructed indicators to compare the quality of relational life across countries throughout the world and to explore its determinants at individual and country level. Overall, the results indicate that, ceteris paribus, better economic conditions are associated with higher quality of interpersonal relationships.

There has been considerable debate in the last decade about whether or not family planning programs in developing countries reduce fertility or improve socio-economic outcomes. Despite suggestive associations, disagreement persists because the availability and use of modern contraceptives are generally determined by both supply- and demand-side factors. This paper provides new evidence on the role of contraceptive supply by exploiting the surprisingly haphazard expansion of one of the world%u2019s oldest and largest family planning organizations %uF818 PROFAMILIA of Colombia. Its findings suggest that family planning allowed Colombian women to postpone their first birth and have approximately one-half fewer children in their lifetime. Delayed first births, in turn, seem to have enabled young women to obtain more education and to work more and live independently later in life. Although family planning explains only about 10% of Colombia%u2019s fertility decline, it appears to have reduced the otherwise substantial costs of fertility control and may be among the most effective development interventions.

During the most recent decades people in industrialised countries have reported both a stagnant or even declining subjective well-being, as Easterlin (1974) originally observed, and deterioration in their social and family bonds, as Putnam (2000) has claimed. The paper proposes an integrated explanation of these two stylised facts by extending the analysis of the relative income explanation of the Easterlin paradox to social relationships as enjoyable ends of choice. Drawing on the evidence-based results of social psychology, the paper constructs a model whose premises are (i) that individuals produce social relationships by means of relational ability, (ii) that this ability is primarily shaped during infancy and remains largely unpredictable, and (iii) that commercial pressure on children to consume in competition with others may displace the enjoyment of social relationships. The model extends microfoundations to encompass new psychological dimensions. It is thus able to merge individuals’ idiosyncratic dynamics – which may deteriorate across generations – with improving economic contextual conditions, and to indicate some new priorities in policy options.

Global Production System has changed remarkably over the period of time. In order to cope up with the change in the nature and type of production, the small and household garment and textile units are employing the younger and skilled labor force. The workers in these units are employed on the contract, causal and temporary basis. They are not given the different benefits as applicable to the large scale unit workers. Such workers are employed more hours and weekly holidays are not given to them. The small and household units are simply maximizing their interest and profit. Such capitalist nature of productive activities makes the labor worse. They are given less wages and classified as unskilled workers. Workers are not given proper training and security of work by these units. Their access to productive assets and standard of living is low as compare to the large unit’s workers. In order to improve the workers conditions, minimum wage should be given to all workers in small and household units. Such units must maintain their annual records of transactions. Small and household units must send their workers for compulsory training. Work place environment, minimum hours of work are required to regulate in these sectors. Immediate steps will have positive impact on workers earning and standard of living. It will help for further productivity enhancement.

This paper deals with the relationship between subjective well-being and ageing in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). The baseline results confirm the U-shaped relationship between life satisfaction and age, which has been found in many case studies by economists and others. Furthermore, the functional flexibility allows us to detect a second turning point later in life. Finally, some methodological issues are discussed and robustness checks are performed to further understand the observed relationship. The paper tries to emphasize the usefulness of the longitudinal set-up of the SOEP to examine life cycle patterns. JEL Classification: C23, I31, J10

In this paper, we revisit two pieces of conventional wisdom in the current debate about poverty, paying close attention to the price data underlying these findings: that the poor pay more than households of higher income for the goods and services they purchase; and that poverty rates, at least as measured by the U.S. Census, have remained essentially flat since the late 1960s, raising questions about the success of the policies implemented to reduce poverty. By examining scanner data on thousands of household purchases, we find that the poor pay less—not more—for the goods they purchase. And by extending the advances on price measurement in the recent decade back to the 1970s, we find that current poverty rates are less than half of the official numbers.

Zusammenfassung: Der Ubergang zur Marktwirtschaft erfolgte in Ostdeutschland im Unterschied zu anderen osteuropaischen Staaten unter dem Primat der sozialpolitischen Angleichung der Lebensbedingungen an das hohere Wohlstandsniveau der westlichen Bundeslander. Bezuglich der Wohlstandsentwicklung wie auch der subjektiven Bewertungsmasstabe lassen sich im Verlauf der 90er Jahre hierbei deutliche Angleichungsfortschritte aufzeigen. In der zweiten Halfte der 90er Jahre hat sich dieser Angleichungsprozess immer weiter verlangsamt. Fur die noch verbleibenden Differenzen zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland sind sowohl hinsichtlich der Einkommensunterschiede als auch der Zufriedenheitseinschatzungen derzeit keine weiteren schnellen Angleichungen absehbar. Auch die Wahrnehmung der „gemeinsamen” deutschen Gesellschaft bezuglich der subjektiven Schichteinstufung, der Gerechtigkeitseinschatzung und in der Wahrnehmung von Konfl ikten weist so im Ganzen zwar deutliche Angleichungsfortschritte auf, unterscheidet sich in Teilen aber noch erheblich. Summary: The idea governing the transition to a market economy in East Germany—in contrast to other Eastern European countries—was that of using socio-political measures to raise East German living conditions to the higher West German standards. And indeed, the rising living standard and subjective evaluation criteria provide evidence of signifi cant progress towards convergence over the course of the 1990s. In the second half of that decade, however, process slowed gradually, and does not appear likely to accelerate again in the near future, to close the remaining gap between East and West Germany in income differences and subjective evaluations of life satisfaction. There has been signifi cant progress toward convergence in the overall perception of a “unifi ed” German society with regard to subjective class identifi cation, evaluations of justice, and perceptions of confl icts, but there still remain considerable differences in particular areas.

This paper holds the view that the intertemporal comparison of people’s subjective evaluations of their lives and living conditions are only meaningful to t he extent the standard of judgement is unaltered. In consequence, the inferences from an analysis of intertemporal changes in subjective well-being are restricted since it is indisti nct whether such changes are caused by a variation in the living conditions or by an adjustment of st andards. This is a weak point of subjective well-being measures. The present study investigates the change in the satisfaction judgements resulting from adaptation to income over time. Adaptation is understood as desensitization (sensitization) to the hedonic effect of income resulting from increases (decreases) in income. An estimator for the rate of adaptation is derived from an adaptive utility function. Using data on self-reported satisfaction with household inco me and global life satisfaction from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), it is found that adaptation leads to a reduction in the hedonic effect of income of approximately 4% (satisfaction with the household income) and 6% (life satisfaction), respectively. Calculating a co mpensating income variation indicates that an increase in income of roughly 2% year is fully offset by adaptation. Furthermore, the results indicate that adaptation is asymmetric: People ada pt faster to increases (gains) than to decreases (losses) in income. Finally, it is found that the r ate of adaptation varies with education: Respondents with a high (low) educational attainment exhibit a low (high) propensity to adapt to income.

Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we examine the link between income and subjective well-being. We find that, for the whole sample of nineteen European countries, although income is positively correlated with both happiness and life satisfaction, reference income exerts a negative effect on individual well-being, a result consistent with the relative utility hypothesis. Performing separate analyses for some Eastern European countries, we also find some evidence of a ‘tunnel effect’, in that reference income has a positive impact on subjective well-being. Our findings support the view that in environments with stable income and employment, reference income serves as a basis for social comparisons, whereas in relatively volatile environments, it is used as a source of information for forming expectations about future status.

This paper compares the geometric variant of the Gender-Related Development Index with that of the Human Development Index for Spanish provinces (EUROSTAT Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics-3, NUTS-3) in 1959, 1981, and 1999. The main objective is to carry out an exploratory analysis of the relationship between these indices and two alternative indices of gender inequality—the Relative Status of Women and the Gender Inequality Index. An analysis of the relationship between these indices and economic growth at the provincial level is also conducted.

The aim of the present paper is to establish certain mathematical models for organizational wellness as well as to create some wellness optimization problems applicable to any type of organization (including universities) that might be mathematically solved resorting to aspects of operational research of mathematical analysis. The results obtained associated with a mathematical apparatus enable one to perform analyses, comparisons, interpretations, predictions. All of us have, consciously or not, a genuine curiosity in creating and shaping organizational wellness. This concept represents a highly topical issue since professional activity, irrespective of its field, holds a very significant place for each of us. The hard-to-dinstinguish „border” between personal and professional life urges all companies, smaller or larger, to attempt to find solution at an individual and organizational level in order to support and improve the concept of organizational wellness, in its current and future understanding. Regardless of their thoughts, feelings or actions, all individuals belong to that organization.

We examine the economic well-being of the elderly, using the Levy Institute Measure of EconomicWell-Being (LIMEW). The LIMEW is a comprehensive measure that incorporates broader definitions of income, from wealth, government expenditures, and taxes, than standard income and also includes the value of household production. We find that the elderly are much better off relative to the non-elderly according to the LIMEW than according to the money income or the Census Bureau’s “Extended Income” (EI) concept. The main reason is the much higher income from wealth and net government expenditures for the elderly than for the non-elderly. Both mean and median measures of the LIMEW also grew much faster for the elderly than for the non-elderly over the period 1989-2001. In contrast, growth rates of money income were actually greater for the non-elderly than for the elderly over this period. We also find that the degree of inequality in the LIMEW is substantially higher among the elderly than among the non-elerly. In contrast, inequality in EI is virtually identical between the two groups. Inequality in the LIMEW grew for both the elderly and the non-elderly, while the inequality in EI (as well as in standard money income) grew only for the latter group.

Das individuelle Nettovermögen in Deutschland betrug zum Jahresbeginn 2007 im Durchschnitt rund 88 000 Euro und ist damit gegenüber 2002 um rund zehn Prozent gestiegen. Maßgeblich für diese Entwicklung war die Zunahme des Geldvermögens sowie der Vermögen aus privaten Versicherungen. Im Zusammenhang mit der insgesamt sehr ungleichen Verteilung des Vermögens liegt der Median, also der Wert, der die reiche Hälfte der Bevölkerung von der ärmeren trennt, weiterhin nur bei etwa 15 000 Euro. Immerhin rund zwei Drittel der Bevölkerung ab 17 Jahren verfügten über kein oder nur ein sehr geringes Geld- und Sachvermögen. Insgesamt hat die Vermögensungleichheit in Deutschland seit 2002 weiter zugenommen. Im Rahmen dieser Entwicklung haben sich die bereits 2002 bestehenden Vermögensunterschiede zwischen West- und Ostdeutschland vergrößert, wozu vor allem die sinkenden Marktwerte von Immobilien in Ostdeutschland beigetragen haben. Die Reformen der gesetzlichen Alterssicherungssysteme erfordern eine Stärkung der privaten und betrieblichen Altersvorsorge. Hier kommt der privaten Vermögensbildung durch Investition in selbstgenutztes Wohneigentum und regelmäßige Spartätigkeit - auch staatlich gefördert - eine besondere Bedeutung für die Lebensstandardsicherung nach dem Ausscheiden aus dem Berufsleben zu.