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This paper investigates the effect of household size, and in particular of the number of children of different age groups, on poverty, defined as being in a situation of low income. We apply various static and dynamic probit models to control for the endogeneity of the variables of interest and to account for unobserved heterogeneity, state dependence, and serially correlated error components. Using Luxembourg longitudinal data, we show that the number of children of different age groups significantly affects the probability of being poor. However, the magnitude of the effect varies across different specifications. In addition, we find strong evidence of true poverty persistency due to past experience, spurious poverty persistency due to individual heterogeneity, and transitory random shocks.

We analyse the determinants of poverty transitions, defined as movements across a low-income threshold, in Luxembourg. Data used are those from the Luxembourg socio-economic panel ‘Liewen zu Lëtzebuerg’ (PSELL3) running from 2003 to 2009. Using an endogenous switching first-order Markov model, we control for potential endogeneity to low-income transitions due to both initial conditions and non-random attrition. We find that employment protects from both remaining poor and entering poverty while several characteristics of the head of the household, such as low education or citizenship, and also household composition and housing tenure status are correlated to poverty entry but not to poverty persistence. In addition, attrition and initial low income are found to be endogenous processes with respect to low-income transitions. Finally, genuine state dependence accounts for a substantial level of aggregate state dependence.

It is our pleasure as editors to dedicate Research on Economic Inequality, Volume 20 to Professor Jacques Silber. Jacques is a long-time friend of the series and has kindly functioned as a mentor and advisor to us.

We propose a framework for the measurement of income mobility over several time periods, based on the notion that multi-period mobility amounts to measuring the degree of association between the individuals and the time periods. More precisely we compare the actual income share of individuals at a given time in the total income of all individuals over the whole period analyzed, with their “expected” share, assumed to be equal to the hypothetical income share in the total income of society over the whole accounting period that an individual would have had at a given time, had there been complete independence between the individuals and the time periods. We then show that an appropriate way of consistently measuring multi-period mobility should focus on the absolute rather than the traditional (relative) Lorenz curve and that the relevant variable to be accumulated should be the difference between the “a priori” and “a posteriori” shares previously defined. Moving from an ordinal to a cardinal approach to measuring multi-period mobility, we then propose classes of mobility indices based on absolute inequality indices. We illustrate our approach with an empirical application using the EU-SILC rotating panel dataset. Our empirical analysis seems to vindicate our approach because it clearly shows that income mobility was higher in the new EU countries (those that joined the EU in 2004 and later). We also observe that income mobility after 2008 was higher in three countries that were particularly affected by the financial crisis: Greece, Portugal, and Spain.

Sustainable development has clearly taken on a global dimension, even if in recent years it has increasingly been acknowledged that there is a close mutual interaction between local and global processes. Politicians, economists and practitioners have realised that regional differences and particularities have become very important for building a people‐based development which is not only goods‐based. Thus, some new keywords for endogenous self‐sustainable development are: networks, knowledge and local milieux. The integration of sustainable development aspects in spatial planning, territory governance and development has become stronger and stronger, combined with a spread of local knowledge and the preservation of both the cultural and environmental heritage. This paper considers all these factors and tries to explain these types of relationships, starting from the idea of city network as a basis for global competition, and moving on towards discussing the role of universities and scientific parks as institutions for knowledge production and dissemination. Finally, the important role of cultural heritage in a territory is investigated, as tool for building a culture‐based growth that should increase social cohesion, local identity and equity. Although largely descriptive, this analysis is of special use to those teaching courses in the fields of architecture, planning and civil engineering, where a broader knowledge of city networks offers a more solid basis upon which awareness of sustainability may be built.