1.1 A Brief Overview An extensive body of empirical and theoretical literature deals with the mea surement of social welfare. This body can be decomposed in several different but related topics, all of which have implications for empirical studies in wel fare economics. One of these topics are household equivalence scales which help to compare welfare levels across households that differ in composition. An equivalence scale relates the income of any arbitrary household type to the income ofa referencehouseholdsuch that both households are equally well-off. Differences in household needs arise from differences in the households' de mographic composition which is, for instance, given by the number, age, and sex of the household members. The increase of household needs is not neces sarily proportional to the increase in the number of household members. Such a non-proportionality, for example, results from differences in the needs of adults and children, economies ofscale arising from the division of fixed costs among the household members, welfare gains from household production, and from common consumption ofcommodities bearing a within-household public good component.

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Autorentext
Carsten Schröder ist als Labrador-Züchter, Ausbilder und Leistungsrichter im Deutschen Retriever Club und im benachbarten Ausland tätig.

Klappentext

The book presents a new survey method for assessing equivalence scales. While previous surveys have frequently been accused of providing data which are substantially biased by respondents' personal characteristics and other subjective biases the new method keeps bias to an absolute minimum. Another key feature is that the derived data adds information as to the impact of two key variables on equivalence scales: income and the number of employed household members. In contrast to the standard 'independence of base assumption', the equivalence scales presented are inversely related to the income level of the reference household (a single adult), and increase in the number of employed household members.

Inhalt
1.1 A Brief Overview.- 1.2 Objective of the Thesis.- 1.3 Structure of the Thesis.- Equivalence-Scale Measurement.- 2.1 Expert Approaches.- 2.2 Economic Approaches.- 2.3 Survey Approaches.- The Potential Dependence of Equivalence Scales on Income.- 3.1 Plausibility of Constant Equivalence Scales.- 3.2 Empirical Picture.- 3.3 Conclusion.- Equivalence Scales, Employment and Household Production.- 4.1 The Earnings-Capacity Argument.- 4.2 The Household Production Argument.- 4.3 Conclusion.- A New Consensual Approach.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 The New Survey Design.- 5.3 On the Choice of Income as an Indicator of Well-Being.- 5.4 Validity and Reliability: Test Methods.- Survey I.- 6.1 Motivation and Outline.- 6.2 Questionnaire Design.- 6.3 Breakdown of the Samples.- 6.4 Regression Model, Notation, and Data Preparation.- 6.5 Country-specific Regression Analysis.- 6.6 Cross-country Differences.- 6.7 Descriptive Analysis.- 6.8 Validity.- 6.9 Reliability.- Survey II.- 7.1 Motivation and Outline.- 7.2 On Internet Surveys.- 7.3 Questionnaire Design.- 7.4 Breakdown of the Samples.- 7.5 Regression Model, Notation, and Data Preparation.- 7.6 Country-specific Regression Analysis.- 7.7 Cross-country Differences.- 7.8 Descriptive Analysis.- 7.9 Validity.- 7.10 Reliability.- Conclusion.- List of Symbols.- List of Figures and Tables.- References.