Much analysis in macroeconomics empirically addresses economy-wide incentives behind consumer/investment choices by using insights from the way a single representative household would behave. Heterogeneity at the micro level can jeopardize attempts to back up the representative consumer...

Two conversion schemes are usually employed for assessing personal-income inequality from household equivalent incomes: to weight household units by size or by needs. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, the authors show the sensitivity of country inequality rankings to conversion...

When individual or household incomes are collected for administrative or scientific surveys, the reference period of income is sometimes a month, sometimes a quarter, and sometimes a year. This reference period of income likely affects the shape of the distribution and derived measures of...

We use a large household panel for Japan (Keio Household Panel Survey) to estimate household-size economies in energy consumption. The household-size economies we obtain are significant and sizable: the per-capita energy-related spending of a two-adult household is only about two-thirds of the...

Raising children demands a considerable amount of parental time, obliging working parents either to reduce their leisure time further or to buy childcare services in the market. Parents may face additional opportunity costs upon deciding to participate in the labor market, but these are...

Die Zusammenlegung von Arbeitslosen- und Sozialhilfe hatte unter anderem das Ziel, die Arbeitsanreize für arbeitsfähige Leistungsempfänger zu stärken. Wie sind die Anreizwirkungen zu bewerten? Wirkt der durch Arbeitslosengeld II erreichbare Lebensstandard negativ bei der Entscheidung für...

Um die Arbeitsanreize und die Verteilungsgerechtigkeit des Arbeitslosengeldes II (ALG II) zu analysieren, ist eine Quantifizierung des Arbeitsleides und des Wertes der Haushaltsproduktion in verschiedenen Haushaltstypen notwendig. Da diese Größen nicht direkt beobachtbar sind, verwendet die...