Choosing an appropriate equivalence scale is a prerequisite for comparisons of economic wellbeing income distribution, inequality or poverty. This is true for country specific work or for cross-national comparisons. Researchers generally either use a country specific equivalence scale (social assistance, expert based, or poverty scales), or adopt a single scale for all comparison across countries. Here we follow a different approach. We use microdata to estimate equivalence scales based on a revealed preference consumption approach for West Germany and the United States. We review several approaches and rely on a complete demand system approach, which provides constant utility based equivalence scales using an extended linear expenditure system (ELES). The multiple equation expenditure system takes into account a full market basket with all its interdependencies and relative prices. Our consumption-based equivalence results are compared to alternative consumption based measures, expert based measures, and subjective based measures in use in both countries and to other scales used for cross-national comparisons.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
7233.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - General D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
van Praag, Bernard M S & Hagenaars, Aldi J M & van Weeren, Hans, 1982.
"Poverty in Europe,"
Review of Income and Wealth,
Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(3), pages 345-59, September.