Returns to investment in education: A global update

The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism traces how individuals fare over time in each of the three principal types of welfare state. Through a unique analysis of panel data from Germany, the Netherlands and the US, tracking individuals' socio-economic fate over fully ten years, Goodin, Headey, Muffels and Dirven explore issues of economic growth and efficiency, of poverty and inequality, of social integration and social autonomy. It is common to talk of the inevitability of tradeoffs between these goals. However, in this book the authors contend that the social democratic welfare regime, represented here by the Netherlands, equals or exceeds the performance of the corporatist German regime and the liberal US regime across all these social and economic objectives. They thus argue that, whatever one's priorities, the social democratic welfare regime is uniquely well-suited to realizing them.

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The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

This study has two principal objectives. The first objective is to measure and compare the performance of European railways. The second objective is to illustrate the usefulness of econometric distance functions in the analysis of production in multioutput industries, where behavioural assumptions such as cost minimization or profit maximization, are unlikely to be applicable. Using annual data on 17 railways companies during 1988–1993, multioutput distance functions are estimated using corrected ordinary least squares (COLS). The resulting technical efficiency estimates range from 0.980 for the Netherlands to 0.784 for Italy, with a mean of 0.863. The distance function results are also compared with those obtained from single-output production functions, where aggregate output measures are formed using either total revenue or a Tornqvist index. The results obtained indicate substantial differences in parameter estimates and technical efficiency rankings, casting significant doubt upon the reliability of ...

Technical efficiency of European railways: a distance function approach

Institutional quality, green innovation and energy efficiency

This paper makes a systematic comparison of four approaches to multidimensional poverty analysis based respectively on the theory of fuzzy sets, information theory, efficiency analysis and axiomatic derivations of poverty indices. The database was the 1995 Israeli Census that provided information on the ownership of various durable goods. There appears to be a fair degree of agreement between the various multidimensional poverty indices concerning the identification of the poor households. The four approaches have also shown that poverty decreases with the schooling level of the head of the household, first decreases and then increases with his/her age and with the size of the household. Poverty is higher when the head of the household is single and lower when he/she is married, lowest when the head of the household is Jewish and highest when he/she is Muslim. Poverty is also higher among households whose head immigrated in recent years, does not work or lives in Jerusalem. These observations were made on the basis of logit regressions. This impact on poverty of many of the variables is not very different from the one that is observed when poverty measurement is based only on the income or the total expenditures of the households.

Measuring Multidimensional Poverty: An Empirical Comparison of Various Approaches

The degree of inequality in the levels of well-being of its citizens tells us a great deal about a society It enables us to judge its social and economic system, to identify those citizens with a claim on community compassion, to identify the sources of hardship, and to devise strategies for reducing levels of hardship The value of such information is undoubted But we confront a severe practical problem in first defining, and then measuring, what we mean by well-being It is surely multi-dimensional, and difficult to reduce to a scalar-valued index

Resources and functionings: a new view of inequality in australia

In the late 1980's, Australians were indeed Living Decently although this was not the general world-wide perception. Material affluence was at an all-time high and Australia was considered a world leader in social mobility. Unpersuaded by the gloom and doom accounts of ever-increasing poverty and the poor quality of life in Australia, the authors set out to examine the measures used in these accounts and concluded that they make it difficult to reach any conclusion other than a gloomy one. Here, the authors have designed better quantitative measures of material well-being and poverty, and then have used them to gain a more accurate and more encouraging picture of how Australians were living in the late 1980s. From this accurate analysis the authors make recommendations on how Australians can live as well in the future as they have in the past.

Living Decently: Material Well-Being in Australia

Utilizing information in the 1933 census we estimate several measures of individual and household income inequality for that year. Allowance is made for the effect of the Depression on the 1933 income distribution, revealing a clearly adverse impact. Comparisons with recent years indicate marked declines in aggregate income inequality.

More or Less Equal? Australian Income Distribution in 1933 and 1980*

Earnings, education and experience: is australia different?*

There have been rising levels of inequality in the earnings distribution in some OECD countries (principally the English-speaking ones), together with stub bornly high levels of unemployment in many others. Australia has shared in the increases in earnings inequality and persistent unemployment. The increasing earnings inequality has led to renewed interest in the usefulness of legally binding minimum wages as an instrument for redressing it. The high unemployment has led to a renewed interest in removing restrictions on what employers must pay, in the hope that this will increase employment. This paper provides the first detailed examination of the low- wage group in Australia and its standing in the distribution of household equivalent income. It finds that low-wage workea s are varied in their socioeconomic characteristics. They are not typically new entrants to the labour force. They look very like all wage earners in their age distribution. A majority work full-time and are married; 40 per cent have ...

Sue Richardson

Papers

Resources and functionings: a new view of inequality in australia

Living Decently: Material Well-Being in Australia

More or Less Equal? Australian Income Distribution in 1933 and 1980*

Earnings, education and experience: is australia different?*

Who Gets Minimum Wages