This note shows that for two inequality averse social welfare functions, if one is more inequality averse than the other, the household preference induced by optimally allocating aggregate bundles according to this social welfare function is more risk averse than the other. We present examples showing that this comparative static can be reversed if inequality aversion is dropped. We show that t...

We extend the collective model of household behavior to allow for the existence of public consumption. We show how this model allows to analyze welfare consequences of policies aimed at changing the distribution of power within the household. In particular, we claim that our setting provides an adequate conceptual framework for addressing issues linked to the ’targetting’ of specific benefits o...

We extend the collective model of household behavior to allow for the existence of public consumption. We show how this model allows the analysis of welfare consequences of policies aimed at changing the distribution of power within the household. Our setting provides a conceptual framework for addressing issues linked to the “targeting” of specific benefits or taxes. We also show that the obse...

We study the problem of uncertainty sharing within a household: “risk sharing,” in a context of Knightian uncertainty. A household shares uncertain prospects using a social welfare function. We characterize the social welfare functions such that the household is collectively less averse to uncertainty than each member, and satisfies the Pareto principle and an independence axiom. We single out ...

In this paper we assess whether it is changing needs or intertemporal substitution that dominate household expenditure responses to the presence of children over the life-cycle. We construct lifetime expenditure paths for households with different demographic proliles and consider the shape of these paths and some possible implications for welfare measures. Simulated expenditure paths based on ...

Title of Dissertation: HOUSEHOLD ENERGY USE, INDOOR AIR POLLUTION, AND HEALTH IMPACTS IN INIDA: A WELFARE ANALYSIS Yabei Zhang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Dissertation directed by: Professor Richard Just Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics This dissertation develops a unified analytical framework to understand the relationships among household energy use, indoor air pollution (IAP...

Applied welfare analyses of redistributive systems nowadays benefit from powerful taxbenefit microsimulation programs combined with administrative data. Arguably, most of the distributional studies of that kind focus on social welfare defined as a function – typically inequality or poverty indices – of household equivalized income. In parallel, economic research has made considerable progress i...

This paper analyses the determinants of household welfare in the Northwest region of Tanzania using microlevel cross section data. Despite having gone through a series of structural adjustment programs in the late1980s, Tanzania is still considered one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper argues that the determinants of household welfare are numerous and complex, ranging fr...

Household food insufficiency is a significant problem in the United States, and has been associated with poor outcomes on mental health indicators among low-income women. However, it is difficult to disentangle the mental health consequences of household food insufficiency from poverty and other shared risk factors. Drawing on theories of the social production of health and disease, research ev...

This article reports on a sample of 538 African American and Hispanic women who were receiving TANF in 1999, 416 of whom left the program by 2005. The Hispanic women consisted of a Mexican-origin group and a second group that was primarily Puerto Rican and Dominican. Combining the experiences of the employed and the non-employed welfare leavers, we find at best a modest decline in the average p...