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The physical structure of the dwelling itself and its immediate surroundings determine its Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and this has a direct impact on the perception of comfort and wellbeing of the people who live there. Analysing the adequacy of housing from a comfort perception perspective makes it possible to better design renovation strategies for buildings. The aim of this paper is to define a multidimensional index based on multiple comfort variables to measure household discomfort. The proposed method assigns to each household a level of discomfort according to the comfort variables in which it is affected. Subsequently, these households’ values are aggregated to obtain an overall discomfort value for the society analysed. The evolution of the perception of discomfort from 2008 to 2020, the incidence of each of the variables, and the characteristics of the dwellings with the highest levels of discomfort are studied for Spanish households using the Spanish Survey on Income and Living Conditions. The results highlight a large increase in discomfort in 2020, the year of Covid-19 lockdown in Spain, and reveal that the most affected households are those living in populated areas, in apartments and in rented houses, and that the variable that affects them the most is Acoustic Comfort.

The development of a common standard of consumption is one goal of the ongoing harmonization of the EU member states’ economies. As a result, the degree to which household deprivation affects people’s economic stress should converge. Based on comparison theory, such convergence could be one indicator for Europe growing together (‘Europeanization’). The association between deprivation and economic stress is tested across and between 28 EU countries with EU-SILC data. Moreover, it is examined whether this association changed between 2007 and 2015, as the great recession starting in 2008 affected European countries differently. The results show that, given a certain level of household deprivation, people judge their situation differently across Europe. Whereas economic stress levels are higher in relatively poor countries, the deprivation-stress link is stronger in rich countries. Across-time comparisons suggest no decline in the extent to which a country’s deprivation level moderated the effect of household deprivation on economic stress. The findings support the persistence of national reference groups against which individuals judge their own economic situation.

This paper introduces a theory-based equivalence scale for public in-kind transfers, which justifies comparison of distributions of extended income (cash income plus the value of public services) between European countries. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed equivalence scale in an empirical analysis of the effects of public health care, long-term care, education and childcare expenditure on estimates of income inequality and poverty for 24 European countries. The empirical results show significant effects of public in-kind transfers on the level of income inequality and poverty for all countries. Over the period 2006–2018, inequality and poverty estimates display rather different trends across European countries.

Distributional implications of capital account regulation is eminently context-specific. This paper examines the distributional effects of the openness of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows across 27 European countries in different economic environments around the Great Recession, covering the period 2007-2013. Our multi-level approach allows us to combine country-level variables and sociodemographic characteristics of individuals. The results highlight that the openness of FDI flows heterogeneously affects the income share of individual groups, favouring in particular the highest income classes. This finding seems to be driven by the educational level. We argue that even though highly educated individuals are present along the entire distribution, the highest income classes are especially favoured by the openness of FDI flows. This biased distributional effect of the openness of FDI flows persists throughout the years examined, regardless of the economic environment; this is due, in part, to the fact that the distribution of highly educated people is not sensitive to the business cycle.

The rapidly rising generation of municipal solid waste jeopardizes the environment and contributes to climate heating. Based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, we here develop a global systematic approach for evaluating the potentials to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants from the implementation of circular municipal waste management systems. We contrast two sets of global scenarios until 2050, namely baseline and mitigation scenarios, and show that mitigation strategies in the sustainability-oriented scenario yields earlier, and major, co-benefits compared to scenarios in which inequalities are reduced but that are focused solely on technical solutions. The sustainability-oriented scenario leaves 386 Tg CO 2eq /yr of GHG (CH 4 and CO 2 ) to be released while air pollutants from open burning can be eliminated, indicating that this source of ambient air pollution can be entirely eradicated before 2050. A sustainability scenario yields major co-benefits compared to technical solution-focused scenarios, leaving 386 Tg CO2eq/yr of GHG to be released while air pollutants from open burning can be eliminated before 2050, finds study on implementation of circular municipal waste management systems.

Persistently low employment of women in some countries can still be ascribed to a traditional perception of women’s role in society. According to observed data and prevailing social and cultural norms, women have been bearing the primary burdens of housework, childcare, and other family responsibilities. The unequal share of care responsibilities between women and men further worsens the disadvantages of women in balancing public and private life, with an impact on their employment and health outcomes. In this paper we investigate the role of family responsibilities in shaping employment and health outcomes by gender, in Italy and France, during and after the economic downturn. We use data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions for the time windows of 2007–2010 and 2011–2014. Our results support that gender differences in the share of responsibilities roles in the public and private sphere influence the employability and health perception of women.

BACKGROUND Measures of fertility by level of female education are currently only available for cohorts that have already completed childbearing age. The focus on cohorts whose fertility decisions were made in the past is problematic when the objective is to better understand which specific groups within European countries are currently the most affected by low and/or declining fertility. OBJECTIVE In this article we provide more timely measures of the educational gradient of fertility for Europe by quantifying it for those cohorts that are currently of childbearing age (ages 15 to 49) for most European countries. METHODS To measure period fertility by education for 24 EU and 4 non-EU countries in Europe, we use data from the European Union's Survey of Income and Living Conditions, EUSILC (Eurostat 2020). A semi-retrospective approach is used to observe the parityspecific fertility behavior of cohorts that are of childbearing age, while at the same time recording the educational level correctly. Bayesian statistics allow us to obtain credible intervals for the age-, education-, and parity-specific birth probabilities for each country. These birth probabilities are then combined into a multi-state life table in order to obtain parity-specific and total birth intensities by education. A post-stratification of birth probabilities allows consistency with national fertility estimates, enabling international comparisons of specific groups (e.g., highly educated women) or of particular dimensions of fertility behavior (e.g., childlessness). RESULTS Our analytical set-up reveals whether there are significant differences in fertility behavior between education groups in each European country and how these differentials vary between European countries. More precisely, we answer the question of whether, when all birth orders are combined, heterogeneity in period fertility behavior is greater among the higher- or the lower-educated across Europe. In addition, we show for which parity the heterogeneity between education groups is the largest. CONCLUSIONS Even if low-educated women have the highest period fertility levels in almost all covered European countries, the educational gradient is not always negative. In one-third of European countries, period fertility levels in 2010 exhibit a U-shaped pattern, with the middle-educated having the lowest fertility. The diversity in period fertility levels among highly educated women in Europe is due to the transitions to first and second childbirth of highly educated women being higher in some countries than in others, while higherorder childbirths exhibit a more negative educational gradient across Europe. CONTRIBUTION By delivering a new method for measuring the educational gradient of fertility for women who are of childbearing age rather than for women who have already completed their reproductive years, our research enables a timely analysis of within-country differentials of period fertility behavior.

Measures of inequality can be used to illustrate inequality between and within groups, but the choice of the appropriate measure can have different implications. This study focused on the Mean Logarithmic Deviation, the measure proposed by Theil and based on the techniques of statistical information theory. The MLD was selected because of its attractive properties: fulfillment of the principle of monotonicity and the possibility of additive decomposition. The following study objectives were formulated: (1) to assess the degree of inequality in the population and in the distinguished subgroups, (2) to determine the extent to which education and age influence the level of inequality, and (3) to ascertain what factors contribute to changes in the level of inequality in Poland. The study confirmed an association between the level of education and the average income of the groups distinguished on this basis. The education level of the household head remains an important determinant of household income inequality in Poland, despite the decline in the \"educational bonus\". The study also found that differences in the age of the household head had a smaller effect on income inequality than the level of education. However, it can be concluded that the higher share of older people may contribute to an increase in income inequality between groups, as the income from pension in Poland is more homogeneous than the income from work in younger groups. Moreover, the current paper seeks to situate Theil's approach in the context of scholarly writings since 1967.

The new indicator for material and social deprivation validated in 2014 by the European Commission enlarged the scope of measuring social exclusion, which entails both material hardship of individuals and households, and a relevant social dimension. Using EU-SILC data, this paper compares the standard measure of material deprivation and the new indicator in terms of the sub-population they identify as suffering deprivation across Europe. In 2019, only 57% of the deprived individuals according at least one of the two indicators were so according to both, while 23% was deprived only according to the new measure and 20% was deprived only under the old indicator. We compare the micro-level determinants of inclusion into these different deprived populations, both at the aggregated level and separately for each of the 21 countries included in our sample.