The Welfare Interpretation of Family Size Equivalence Scales

Bruce William Bradbury ()

Discussion Papers from University of New South Wales, Social Policy Research Centre

Abstract: Do family size equivalence scales have a welfare interpretation? Whilst many economists routinely use equivalence scales as a component of between-household welfare comparisons, others insist that choice over demographic composition means that such an interpretation is inappropriate. This paper discusses the conditions under which equivalence scales may be appropriately used for welfare comparisons, and concludes that they will often, but not always, be satisfied. In particular, the analysis suggests that distributional analysis should assume that equivalent income is different for the adults and children in each family.

Date: 1992-11
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/dp/dp037.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:sprcdp:0037

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of New South Wales, Social Policy Research Centre
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Thomas Krichel ().