Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: R. Bollinger, Christopher
Author-Name: Nicoletti, Cheti
Author-Name: Pudney, Stephen
Title: Two can live as cheaply as one… but three’s a crowd
Abstract: To measure poverty, incomes must be equivalized across households with different structures. In this paper, we use a very flexible ordered response model to analyze the relationship between income, demographic structure and subjective assessments of financial wellbeing drawn from the 1991-2008 British Household Panel Survey. Our results suggest the existence of large scale economies within marital/cohabiting couples, but substantial diseconomies from the addition of children or further adults. This pattern contrasts sharply with commonly-used equivalence scales, and is consistent with explanations in terms of the capital requirements associated with additions to the core couple.

Creation-Date: 20120529
Number: 2012-10
Publication-Status: published
File-URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/iser/2012-10.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2012-10