IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0488.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Level and Distribution of Economic Well-Being

Author

Listed:
  • Alan S. Blinder

Abstract

This paper summarizes and critically evaluates what is known about postwar trends in both the level and distribution of economic well-being. Although certain non-income aspects of well-being are considered, the primary focus is on the level and inequality of income. Considerable attention is paid to recent controversies over the effects of transfers in kind and changing life-cycle income patterns on the overall trend in income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan S. Blinder, 1980. "The Level and Distribution of Economic Well-Being," NBER Working Papers 0488, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0488
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0488.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1973. "Some further results on the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 188-204, April.
    2. Timothy M. Smeeding, 1977. "The Antipoverty Effectiveness of In-Kind Transfers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 12(3), pages 360-378.
    3. Murray, David, 1978. "Sources of Income Inequality in Australia, 1968-69," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 54(146), pages 159-169, August.
    4. Smith, James D, 1974. "The Concentration of Personal Wealth in America, 1969," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 20(2), pages 143-180, June.
    5. Blinder, Alan S & Esaki, Howard Y, 1978. "Macroeconomic Activity and Income Distribution in the Postwar United States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(4), pages 604-609, November.
    6. Robert J. Lampman, 1962. "The Share of Top Wealth-Holders in National Wealth, 1922-56," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number lamp62-1, March.
    7. Jacob Bemis & James N. Morgan, 1975. "Time Period, Unit of Analysis, and Income Concept in the Analysis of Income Distribution," NBER Chapters, in: The Personal Distribution of Income and Wealth, pages 209-224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Danziger, Sheldon & Haveman, Robert H & Smolensky, Eugene, 1977. "The Measurement and Trend of Inequality: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 505-512, June.
    9. Usher, Dan (ed.), 1980. "The Measurement of Capital," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226843001, December.
    10. John B. Lansing & John Sonquist, 1969. "A Cohort Analysis of Changes in the Distribution of Wealth," NBER Chapters, in: Six Papers on the Size Distribution of Wealth and Income, pages 31-74, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. James D. Smith, 1974. "The Concentration Of Personal Wealth In America, 1969," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 20(2), pages 143-180, June.
    12. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    13. Alan S. Blinder, 1976. "Inequality And Mobility In The Distribution Of Wealth," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 607-638, January.
    14. David Murray, 1978. "Sources of Income Inequality in Australia, 1968‐69," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 54(2), pages 159-169, August.
    15. Roger H. Gordon & Alan S. Blinder, 1980. "Market Wages, Reservation Wages, and Retirement Decisions," NBER Chapters, in: Econometric Studies in Public Finance, pages 277-308, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Morgan, James N & Smith, James D, 1969. "Measures of Economic Well-Offness and Their Correlates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 450-462, May.
    17. Stigler, George J, 1973. "General Economic Conditions and National Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 160-167, May.
    18. Paglin, Morton, 1975. "The Measurement and Trend of Inequality: A Basic Revision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(4), pages 598-609, September.
    19. Robert Eisner, 1980. "Capital Gains and Income: Real Changes in the Value of Capital in the United States, 1946-77," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Capital, pages 175-346, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Blinder, Alan S, 1976. "Inequality and Mobility in the Distribution of Wealth," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 607-638.
    21. Minarik, Joseph J, 1977. "The Measurement and Trend of Inequality: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 513-516, June.
    22. Easterlin, Richard A., 1974. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 111773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    23. Pyatt, Graham, 1976. "On the Interpretation and Disaggregation of Gini Coefficients," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 86(342), pages 243-255, June.
    24. Shorrocks, Anthony, 1978. "Income inequality and income mobility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 376-393, December.
    25. Andrew I. Kohen & Herbert S. Parnes & John R. Shea, 1975. "Income Instability Among Young and Middle-Aged Men," NBER Chapters, in: The Personal Distribution of Income and Wealth, pages 151-208, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. Rivlin, Alice M, 1975. "Income Distribution-Can Economists Help?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(2), pages 1-15, May.
    27. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931.
    28. Simon Kuznets, 1974. "Demographic Aspects of the Distribution of Income among Families: Recent Trends in the United States," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Willy Sellekaerts (ed.), Econometrics and Economic Theory, chapter 11, pages 223-245, Palgrave Macmillan.
    29. Browning, Edgar K, 1978. "The Burden of Taxation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(4), pages 649-671, August.
    30. Lee Soltow, 1969. "Six Papers on the Size Distribution of Wealth and Income," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number solt69-1, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "L’évolution des inégalités dans les pays industrialisés : le point sur la situation," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 84(3), pages 241-262, septembre.
    2. Joao Pereira & Aurora Galego, 2013. "Intra-Regional Regional Wage Inequality In Portugal: A Quantile Based Decomposition Analisys," ERSA conference papers ersa13p158, European Regional Science Association.
    3. R. D. Plotnick & E. Smolensky & E. Evenhouse & S. Reilly, "undated". "The Twentieth Century Record of Inequality and Poverty in the United States," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1166-98, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    4. Virginia Tsoukatou, 2020. "Examining the correlation of the level of wage inequality with labor market institutions," Papers 2001.06003, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2020.
    5. J. R. Kearl & Clayne L. Pope, 1986. "Choices, Rents, and Luck: Economic Mobility of Nineteenth-Century Utah Households," NBER Chapters, in: Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth, pages 215-260, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Weizsäcker, Robert K. von, 1995. "Does an Aging Population Increase Inequality?," Discussion Papers 535, Institut fuer Volkswirtschaftslehre und Statistik, Abteilung fuer Volkswirtschaftslehre.
    7. Haider, Steven J, 2001. "Earnings Instability and Earnings Inequality of Males in the United States: 1967-1991," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(4), pages 799-836, October.
    8. Thomas Lemieux, 2008. "The changing nature of wage inequality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(1), pages 21-48, January.
    9. Thomas L. Hungerford, 2020. "The Course of Income Inequality as a Cohort Ages into Old-Age," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(1), pages 71-90, March.
    10. Michel Sollogoub, 1988. "L'inégalité des revenus primaires en France de 1962 à 1979," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 39(3), pages 545-572.
    11. Joel Slemrod, 1998. "The Economics of Taxing the Rich," NBER Working Papers 6584, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. von Weizsacker, Robert K., 1996. "Distributive implications of an aging society," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 729-746, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James D. Smith, 1980. "Introduction to "Modeling the Distribution and Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth"," NBER Chapters, in: Modeling the Distribution and Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth, pages 1-8, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. John Creedy, 1991. "Lifetime Earnings and Inequality," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 67(1), pages 46-58, March.
    3. Theodore Koutmeridis, 2013. "The Market for "Rough Diamonds": Information, Finance and Wage Inequality," CDMA Working Paper Series 201307, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis, revised 14 Oct 2013.
    4. Nanak Kakwani & Marcelo Neri & Hyun H. Son, 2006. "Linkages between Pro-Poor Growth, Social Programmes and Labour Market: The Recent Brazilian Experience," Working Papers 26, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    5. Carbonell-Nicolau, Oriol & Llavador, Humberto, 2018. "Inequality reducing properties of progressive income tax schedules: the case of endogenous income," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    6. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2002. "New perspectives on public finance: recent achievements and future challenges," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 341-360, December.
    7. Kakwani, Nanak & Neri, Marcelo Côrtes & Son, Hyun H., 2010. "Linkages Between Pro-Poor Growth, Social Programs and Labor Market: The Recent Brazilian Experience," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 881-894, June.
    8. Ingvild Almås & Magne Mogstad, 2009. "Older or Wealthier? The Impact of Age Adjustments on the Wealth Inequality Ranking of Countries," Discussion Papers 583, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    9. Angus Deaton, 2003. "Health, Inequality, and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 113-158, March.
    10. Michel Le Breton & Juan Moreno-Ternero & Alexei Savvateev & Shlomo Weber, 2013. "Stability and fairness in models with a multiple membership," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(3), pages 673-694, August.
    11. Markus Jäntti & Ravi Kanbur & Milla Nyyssölä & Jukka Pirttilä, 2014. "Poverty and Welfare Measurement on the Basis of Prospect Theory," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(1), pages 182-205, March.
    12. Claudio Zoli, 2002. "Inverse stochastic dominance, inequality measurement and Gini indices," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 77(1), pages 119-161, December.
    13. Nicolas Gravel & Patrick Moyes, 2013. "Utilitarianism or welfarism: does it make a difference?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(2), pages 529-551, February.
    14. F. A. Cowell, 1985. "‘A Fair Suck of the Sauce Bottle’ or What Do You Mean by Inequality?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 61(2), pages 567-579, June.
    15. Claudio Zoli, 2012. "Characterizing Inequality Equivalence Criteria," Working Papers 32/2012, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    16. Oguzhan C. Dincer & Burak Gunalp, 2012. "Corruption And Income Inequality In The United States," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(2), pages 283-292, April.
    17. Stéphane Mussard & Françoise Seyte & Michel Terraza, 2006. "La décomposition de l’indicateur de Gini en sous-groupes : une revue de la littérature," Cahiers de recherche 06-11, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    18. Gustavo Bergantiños & Juan D. Moreno-Ternero, 2019. "A family of rules to share the revenues from broadcasting sport events," Working Papers 19.07, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    19. John A. Bishop & John P. Formby & W. James Smith, 1997. "Demographic Change and Income Inequality in the United States, 1976‐1989," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(1), pages 34-44, July.
    20. Alain Trannoy & John Weymark, 2007. "Dominance Criteria for Critical-Level Generalized Utilitarianism," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0707, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0488. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.