At the end of 2012, almost one-fifth of owner-occupier mortgages were in arrears. A further five per cent not in arrears were classified as “restructured” loans. This Economic Letter looks at the impact of financial distress on household expenditure patterns by comparing the behaviour of households in mortgage distress with similar households in the general population. It finds that, controllin...

According to household production function theory households combine marketed goods and nonmarket environmental goods to produce service flows of direct value to the household. This readily explains why, as an input to household production activities, households might have preferences over the climate. Using techniques more frequently employed to account for differences in the demographic compo...

This paper examines older persons' positions as heads of households in the Agincourt sub-district of Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Older person's access to non-contributory pensions in a context of AIDS-related chronic illness and premature death, might increase their household responsibilities which, in turn, may be manifested in higher rates of household headship. We use descriptive anal...

The human microbiome is affected by multiple factors, including the environment and host genetics. In this study, we analyzed the salivary microbiomes of an extended family of Ashkenazi Jewish individuals living in several cities and investigated associations with both shared household and host genetic similarities. We found that environmental effects dominated over genetic effects. While there...

Abstract Individual and household based aggregate measures of worklessness can, and do, offer conflicting signals about labour market performance. We outline a means of quantifying the extent of any disparity, (polarisation), in the signals stemming from individual and household-based measures of worklessness and apply this index to data from 5 countries over 25 years. Built around a comparison...