Intertemporal Choice and Inequality
Abstract
The permanent income hypothesis implies that, for any cohort of people, inequality in consumption and income should grow with age, a prediction that is here confirmed using data from eleven years of household survey data from the United States, twenty-two years from Great Britain, and fourteen years from Taiwan. In the permanent income hypothesis, the increase in inequality reflects the cumulative effect of luck on consumption. Other models of intertemporal choice--such as those with strong precautionary motives or liquidity constraints--can limit or even prevent the spread of inequality, as can insurance arrangements that share risk across individuals. Copyright 1994 by University of Chicago Press.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Article provided by University of Chicago Press in its journal Journal of Political Economy.
Volume (Year): 102 (1994)
Issue (Month): 3 (June)
Pages: 437-67
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE/
Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Angus Deaton & Christina Paxson, 1993. "Intertemporal Choice and Inequality," NBER Working Papers 4328, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Deaton, A. & Paxson, C., 1993. "Intertemporal Choice and Inequality," Papers 168, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Development Studies.
- D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
- D91 - Microeconomics - - Intertemporal Choice and Growth - - - Intertemporal Consumer Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.
Lists
This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:102:y:1994:i:3:p:437-67For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Journals Division).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

