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RELATIVE INEQUALITY AND POVERTY IN GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES USING ALTERNATIVE EQUIVALENCE SCALES
Author(s) -
Burkhauser Richard V.,
Smeeding Timothy M.,
Merz Joachim
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4991.1996.tb00190.x
Subject(s) - equivalence (formal languages) , poverty , inequality , economics , german , econometrics , development economics , consumption (sociology) , population , demographic economics , scale (ratio) , economic inequality , mathematics , economic growth , geography , demography , sociology , social science , mathematical analysis , cartography , archaeology , discrete mathematics
We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study to show the sensitivity of measures of relative economic well‐being of persons in the U.S. and Germany using official equivalence scales and consumption‐based country‐specific equivalence scales developed for the two countries. Overall inequality and poverty levels are found not to be sensitive to the equivalence scale used. However, the official German equivalence scale yields quite different results from the others with respect to the relative income and poverty levels of vulnerable groups within the population, especially older single people.