Inequality in socially permissible consumption

Consumption Inequality

Does consumption inequality track income inequality in Italy?

This paper presents stylized facts on labor supply, income, consumption, wealth, and several measures of consumption and income inequality drawn from the 1980-2006 Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW)conducted by the Bank of Italy. The SHIW provides information on consumption, income and wealth, and a sizable panel component that allows econometricians to estimate sophisticated income, ...

Consumption Inequality in Canada , 1997 to 2009 ∗

We assess the evolution of consumption inequality in Canada over the years 1997 to 2009. We correct the imputation of shelter consumption for homeowners to allow for unobserved differences in housing quality correlated with selection into rental tenure, and we account for measurement error in this imputation. Using the Surveys of Household Spending 1997-2009, we find that household-level consum...

August 2003 Does Income Inequality Lead to Consumption Inequality ?

This paper first documents the evolution of the cross-sectional income and consumption distribution in the US in the past 25 years. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey we find that rising income inequality has not been accompanied by a corresponding rise in consumption inequality. Over the period from 1972 to 1998 the standard deviation of the log of after-tax labor income has incre...

Does Income Inequality Lead to Consumption Inequality? Evidence and Theory1

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we ...rst document that the recent increase in income inequality in the United States has not been accompanied by a corresponding rise in consumption inequality. Much of this divergence is due to di¤erent trends in within-group inequality, which has increased signi...cantly for income but little for consumption. We then develop a simple framework...