This book deals with the following issues: the analysis, estimation and assessment of alternatived models of income distribution, the specification and evaluation of income inequality measures the analysis and measurement of poverty and its rationale, the scope and methodological power of the social accounting matrix (SAM) in the analysis of the functional and personal distribution of income and the family income multiplier, the study of the source and reliability of income distribution data, the decomposition of income inequality measures, the asymptotic distributions and inferential analysis of income inequalities, and an inquiry on the income distribution and income inequality of Eastern European Countries under socialism. New models on income and wealth distribution are specified and their corresponding properties and goodness of fit are discussed. A multivariate approach to the measurement of poverty is developed and applied, and a compact survey of the literature is presented. The book can be used as a text in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses dealing with the theory, model specifications, methods and applications of income and wealth distribution, income inequality and poverty assessment in measurement and the use of SAMs in the analysis of income distribution.

A group of scholars converging on a common and socially relevant economic theme of research, that of households' welfare and poverty, met several times in the last two years to discuss the research progress and the opportunity to bring to gether for publication the research so far accomplished. They shared a research project supported by a grant from the former Italian Ministero dell'Universita e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (MURST) now Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR): The Equiva lence Scales in the Measurement of Households' Welfare: Statistical, Economic and Demographic Analysis. The decisive meeting, an international seminar on the topics, was hosted by the University of Florence, siege of the national coordinator of this project. When one think of Florence, it is inevitable to think of the unfolding of Ren aissance, and reciprocally. th To the eyes of a traveller who had arrived to Florence in the 15 century, the city would have appeared as a sort of El Dorado, similarly to what would have occurred to the first conquerors of the South America's lands, so much astonishing were the richness of arts and the opulence of life. The flourishing of painting and sculpture had not equal all over the world and was reaching tops never made equal before. Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello and later on Leonardo and Michelangelo, were the artistic and intellectual genius that enlightened beauty lovers princes....."