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When developing anti-poverty policies, policy makers need accurate data on the prevalence of poverty. In this paper, we focus on subjective poverty, a concept which has been largely neglected in literature, yet remains a conceptually appealing way to define poverty. The primary goal of this study is to re-examine the concept of subjective poverty measurement and to estimate trends in subjective poverty rates in the European Union. Our estimations are based on a minimum income question using data from a representative survey, EU-SILC, and we find a decreasing trend in subjective poverty in 16 of 28 countries. Conversely, the official relative income poverty indicator exhibits increasing trends in eleven countries, with decreasing trends in only four countries. We believe that these trends may reflect changes in societies which have not been previously captured, and our results thus enrich the existing data on general poverty trends in the EU.

Previous research suggests that income inequality is lower in Spain than in the U.S. This paper studies whether this ranking remains the same when household consumption expenditures are used as a proxy for household welfare. Both inequality and social welfare, as components of economic well-being, are examined. Total household expenditures from each country’s 1990-91 consumer expenditure survey are used as the basis for the analysis. For tractability, equivalence scales depend only on the number of people in the household and not any other demographic characteristic. Household specific price indices are used to express the 1990-91 expenditure distributions at winter of 1981 and winter of 1991 prices. Decomposable measurement instruments are used both for the inequality and social welfare analyses. Bootstrap methods are used to produce confidence intervals for all estimates. When consumption expenditures are substituted for income as the measure of economic well-being, the ranking of Spain and the U.S. varies as both household size and the equivalence scale adjustment change. When focusing on household size alone, inequality and welfare comparisons are drastically different for smaller and larger households. The income inequality ranking can only be maintained for expenditure distributions when economies of scale are assumed to be small or non-existent. However, welfare is always higher in the U.S. than in Spain. It is concluded that household demographic characteristics, as well as equivalence scale adjustments, can be very important in international comparisons. With regard to householdspecific relative price effects, inflation during the 1980s in both countries has been essentially neutral from a distributional point of view, so that all results are robust to the choice of time period.

The purpose of this paper is to review recent data made available through the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) that include expenditures and asset valuations. The LIS data are augmented with comparable data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey. The surveys with expenditure data are reviewed in terms of collection units and variable definitions. Inequality statistics are produced and compared using income, expenditures, and market value of owned home. Rankings of countries by income and expenditure inequality are similar but not the same across the countries studied. Suggestions are made for the LIS to improve the expenditure data available following the COICOPS framework.

The purpose of this research is to examine the role of household size and household specific price indices on inequality and welfare measurement in Spain and the O.S. Total household expenditures from each countries' 1990-91 consumer expenditure surveys, with adjustments to reflect more accurately households' current consumption, are used as the basis for the analysis. Household size scale factors are used to produce adjusted expenditures. Household specific price indices are used to expresss the 1990-91 expenditure distribution at winter of 1981 and winter of 1991 prices. Decomposable measurement instruments are used both for the inequality and social welfare analyses. Our results show that wide differences in household size can be very important in international comparisons. Inequality and welfare comparisons are drastically different for smaller and larger households. For both countries we find that from the point of view of winter 1981, the amount of expenditures that we would need to give to richer households to compensate them for inflation, over the 1981 to 1991 period, would be greater than the amount that we would need to give to poorer households for them to be able to acquire the same bundle of goods. Our inequality comparisons are robust to the choice of the reference price vector.