Properties of Equivalence Scales in Different Countries

Recent studies in industrialized countries have shown that equivalence scales are income-dependent. We investigate whether this dependence also holds in poorer, services oriented countries, by considering the case of Cyprus. We also examine whether household economies of scale and relative children costs differ from those found for industrialized countries.     

Using Panel Data on Income Satisfaction to Estimate Equivalence Scale Elasticity

In this paper, the equivalence scale elasticity will be estimated by using individual panel data on income satisfaction from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP). Satisfaction or happiness data have been more frequently used by economists in recent years to analyze individual well-being. The approach differs from other subjective approaches as respondents are requested to evaluate current income rather than income in hypothetical situations. The estimated scale elasticity is higher compared to those from other subjective approaches based on German data. In addition, panel data enable different scale use by the respondents to be controlled. It can be shown that elasticity decreases when unobserved fixed-effects are controlled for.     

Life Satisfaction,Income Comparisons and Individual Traits

People gain utility from occupying a higher ranked position in the income distribution of the reference group. This paper investigates whether these gains depend on an individual's set of personality and affective traits. Using the 2000 to 2013 waves of the German Socio‐economic Panel dataset (SOEP), a subjective question on Life Satisfaction, and three different measures of personal and affective traits, we find significant and robust differences across groups and conclude that traits determine the relationship between rank and life satisfaction. The heterogeneity on the importance of income comparisons is relevant, for example, when building economic models, predicting individuals' behavior, or making welfare judgments.     

绝对收入、相对收入与主观幸福感——来自中国城乡住户调查数据的经验分析

文章以我国住户调查数据为基础,经验性地讨论了收入与主观幸福感的关系.研究表明,绝对收入与主观幸福感之间具有显著的正向关联,即便控制了相对收入效应,绝对收入的影响仍较显著.因此无论是相对意义还是绝对意义,收入仍然是提升主观幸福感的重要因素.但是另一方面,主观幸福感与收入水平之间的相关程度并不高,主观幸福感决定中的非收入因素也值得进一步关注.     

Disability Costs and Equivalence Scales in the Older Population in Great Britain

We use a standard of living (SoL) approach to estimate older people's disability costs, using data on 8000 individuals from the U.K. Family Resources Survey. We extend previous research in two ways. First, by allowing for a more flexible relationship between SoL and income, the structure of the estimated disability cost and equivalence scale is not dictated by a restrictive functional form assumption. Second, we allow for the latent nature of disability and SoL, addressing measurement error in the disability and SoL indicators in surveys. We find that disability costs are strongly related to severity of disability, and vary with income in absolute and proportionate terms. Older people above the median disability level require an extra £99 per week (2007 prices) on average to reach the SoL of an otherwise similar person at the median. Costs faced by older people in the highest decile of disability average £180.     

A Class of Social Welfare Functions That Depend on Mean Income and Income Polarization

A well‐established strategy for evaluating alternative income distributions is based on the use of an abbreviated social welfare function that depends only on mean income and an inequality index. In keeping with this literature, we study the existence of social welfare functions that can be written as a trade‐off between efficiency and income polarization. This paper proposes a class of social welfare functions consistent with the Esteban and Ray, and Duclos, Esteban and Ray income polarization indices. For this result, we expand the domain for personal preferences to incorporate not only own income but also the well‐being of others. In addition, we link our proposal to the literature on relative satisfaction. The approach is illustrated by an empirical application using the CPS database for the United States in the period 1991–2010.     

Healthy,Wealthy, and Happy: The Joint Role of Health and Income in Explaining Global Life Satisfaction

Based on Gallup World Poll data, we explore the heterogeneous evolution of income, health, and well-being within world population subgroups identified according to country, gender, age, and education, offering an integrated approach with wide geographical coverage. We provide novel evidence on the global “winners” and “losers” in life satisfaction between 2009 and 2018, showing that individuals located at the bottom of the global income distribution and those with poor health saw pronounced reductions in life satisfaction as opposed to populations with incomes falling between the 60th and the 80th centile and the healthy ones, who experienced significant improvements. Our results highlight that health is at least on a par with income in explaining life satisfaction, although there are considerable differences across world regions. In particular, health supersedes income in its relevance to life satisfaction, mostly in more affluent world regions, while the opposite holds in destitute parts of the world.     

Estimation of Equivalence Scales Under Convertible Rationing

This paper provides estimates of equivalence scales based on three Quadratic Almost Ideal type models of the food share with coupon resale, and on their extended versions. A chief feature of the models is the method of dealing with infrequency of zero expenditure on coupon goods through imputation. The models are applied to an Iranian wartime budget survey. The results indicate little scope for measurement error. However, they also reveal a strong cross‐section price effect, which proves robust to a variety of checks. The effect of price heterogeneity proves critical in identification of the scale estimates, providing relatively rare empirical evidence consistent with the Base Independence (BI) hypothesis. The BI food share estimates of cost of children have plausible values.     

A Model of the Relative Income Hypothesis

James Duesenberry's (1949) relative income hypothesis holds substantial empirical credibility, as well as a rich set of implications. Although present in the pages of leading economics journals, the hypothesis has become all but foreign to the blackboards of economics classrooms. To help reintegrate the concept into the undergraduate economics curriculum, the author constructs a model of the relative income hypothesis to present a few of its important properties and implications. Negative spending externalities, the effect of public provision taxes on wasteful spending races, and the Pareto implications of universal income growth are illustrated within a two-good consumption space as a method of introducing this rich literature to a greater number of introductory and intermediate economics students.     

Labor-Leisure Choice and Relative Income Concerns in the Shadow of the Housing Market

We theoretically examine the connection among labor productivity, work time, and housing costs in an economy with households differing in wages and neighborhoods differing in quality. We argue that the location rent component of housing cost is key to explicating the connection. We trace how the housing market makes relative income instrumental for maximizing utility even if households’ utility functions are not interdependent. Over time, productivity growth yields higher wages but households compete some of that away on the housing market. This structural inflation of location rents counteracts preferences to work less as wages rise and hinders the expansion of leisure. Relative income effects are shown to arise as a consequence of a market institution that monetizes socially-imbued preferences.     

产业结构调整的收入分配效应研究--基于1998-2012年中国省际面板数据模型的分析

产业结构调整作为政府实现宏观发展战略目标的重要调控手段,具有显著的收入分配效应。构建产业结构调整对城乡收入差距影响机理的分析框架,利用中国30个省份1998-2012年的面板数据,运用联立方程模型和内生分布滞后模型,研究产业结构调整的收入分配效应,结果发现：由于产业结构调整与人力资本结构负相关,在即期会强化农村居民在就业市场中的弱势地位,扩大城乡收入差距;在长期,城乡居民根据产业结构调整重塑就业预期,通过调整人力资本投资结构、提升人力资本水平实现职业转换,第5年以后将出现农村居民收入增幅高于城镇居民的格局,形成乡城收入赶超效应,产生缩小城乡收入差距的正面效应。     

农民收入分配对农村经济增长作用分析

改革开放20年的实践表明，农民收入分配与农村经济增长之问是互相影响的。即在经济发展早期，收入分配不均等对经济增长具有促进作用；当经济发展进入后期，收入分配不均等就会对经济增长产生抑制作用，此时收入分配不均等的缩小可以促进经济增长。     

人民币汇率升值对我国收入分配的负面效应

汇率变动具有收入分配效应,人民币汇率升值将给我国的收入分配带来重大影响.本文首先采用整体分析与结构分析相结合的方法从汇率变动对进出口贸易的总量与结构、国际资本流入的总量与分布的影响、汇率变动的财富效应等方面系统分析了汇率变动对收入分配效应的作用机制及作用条件,结合我国独特的出口产业布局集中、地域广阔、人口流动大、收入分配格局形势严峻等方面的特点探讨了人民币汇率升值对我国收入分配的影响.     

企业对外部环境满意度的规模差异实证研究

本文根据1933份问卷的调研数据,分析了我国企业对外部环境的满意度与企业规模之间的关系。研究发现,外部环境满意度与企业规模存在显著的正相关性,企业规模越大对外部环境的满意度越高。其中,企业对政府、市场规范、金融机构、中介机构的满意度与企业规模的正相关系数最大,规模较大的企业对以上指标的满意度明显高于规模较小的企业。并就此提出了相应的政策建议。     

Housing and Income Inequality in Europe: Distributional Effects of Non-Cash Income From Imputed Rents

This article uses survey data to estimate non-cash income from imputed rents, using a consistent methodology for all countries to assemble comparable statistics that allow for a valid inter-country comparison. We can confirm a significant impact of non-cash income and find an inequality-decreasing effect for the unconditional income distribution which highly correlates with the proportion of owner-occupiers in the respective countries. However, aggregated inequality measures are not suited to analyze the increase in the conditional income inequality between owner-occupiers and renters, who do not obtain income from imputed rents by definition. Therefore, we apply a reweighting decomposition that controls for the heterogeneous housing characteristics among European countries and allows us to decompose the distributional changes into a part that is explained by the proportion of tenure types and household size and a remaining part that reflects the relative dispersion of imputed rents along the income distribution.     

领导者情绪智力对员工工作满意度的影响

采用跨层次的研究设计,利用通过问卷调查收集的数据,探讨了领导者的情绪智力对员工工作满意度的影响作用以及员工的情绪智力对两者间关系的调节作用。针对多层线型模型的统计分析结果表明:领导者认知自我情绪的能力对员工工作满意度的影响作用显著;员工的情绪智力对其工作满意度的影响作用显著;员工的情绪智力对领导者的情绪调节能力与员工的工作满意度间的关系具有调节作用。     

Household Composition, Equivalence Scales and the Reliability of Income Distributions: Some Evidence for Indigenous and Other Australians

Indigenous families experience substantial and multiple forms of economic burden arising from the size and structure of their families and households. Indigenous households are more likely to have more than one family in residence than other Australian households and are more likely to be multigenerational with older Indigenous people living with younger people in extended family households. This paper seeks to characterise the economies of household size in Indigenous and other Australian households using equivalence scales that cover the range of feasible values and 1995 National Health Survey data.     

论提高全民的收入水平

提高全民的收入水平，是我国今后在收入分配制度方面的改革重点和目标，即实现扩大中等收入阶层的比重，提高低收入者收入水平，消灭贫困人口。为此，在收入分配理论方面要实行一系列创新和突破；实践上，中等收入者的扩大，只能或主要来自于中低收入者收入水平的提高。消灭贫困其实质是提高广大农民的收入水平问题。     

中国当前收入差距问题探析

文章通过对造成目前中国收入差距主要原因的简要分析,认为目前中国的收入差距,并没有导致两极分化,而且也 不是两极分化;它是全体人民在共同富裕过程中先富与后富之间关系的反映;我们既要承认收入差距,又要不断缩小收入 差距。     

中国城乡收入差距 影响因素实证分析——基于收入来源视角

中国城乡收入差距在1978～2010年总体呈上升趋势,收入来源分解显示工资性收入对城乡收入差距的贡献度最高,经营性收入和转移性收入的贡献度呈现此消彼长的趋势。计量模型显示总体受教育水平的提高导致工资性收入差距缩小,但城乡教育发展不平衡使经营性收入差距扩大,促进城市化进程不会缩短工资性收入差距,城乡金融发展差异的扩大进一步扩大了经营性和转移性收入差距。缩小城乡收入差距的主要措施包括提高教育水平,实现城乡教育公平、城乡金融均衡发展和均衡城市化进程。