IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scotjp/v67y2020i3p248-271.html

Measuring cross‐country material wellbeing and inequality using consumer durables

Author

Listed:
  • Arthur Grimes
  • Sean Hyland

Abstract

We measure the mean and inequality in country material wellbeing based on households’ consumer durables, using household‐level data from OECD’s PISA surveys for 40 countries over 2000–2012. Our consumption‐based measures capture aspects of material wellbeing not captured fully by income‐based measures. For 2012, tests show that the consumption‐based metrics are more closely associated with objective mortality‐related outcomes than are income‐based measures; in 2000 (and over 2000–2012) each set of measures adds information relative to the other. The consumption‐based measures may be particularly useful in revealing where income‐based measures provide inaccurate indications of the mean and/or inequality in household living standards.

Suggested Citation

  • Arthur Grimes & Sean Hyland, 2020. "Measuring cross‐country material wellbeing and inequality using consumer durables," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 67(3), pages 248-271, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:67:y:2020:i:3:p:248-271
    DOI: 10.1111/sjpe.12237
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12237
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/sjpe.12237?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:pri:rpdevs:deaton_price_indexes_inequality_and_the_measurement_of_world_poverty_aer. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. G. Sirmans & Lynn MacDonald & David Macpherson & Emily Zietz, 2006. "The Value of Housing Characteristics: A Meta Analysis," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 215-240, November.
    3. Christopher D. Carroll & Thomas F. Crossley & John Sabelhaus, 2015. "Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number carr11-1, September.
    4. Jonah B. Gelbach, 2016. "When Do Covariates Matter? And Which Ones, and How Much?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(2), pages 509-543.
    5. Wolfson, Michael C, 1994. "When Inequalities Diverge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 353-358, May.
    6. Apps,Patricia & Rees,Ray, 2009. "Public Economics and the Household," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521716284, January.
    7. Orazio Attanasio & Erich Battistin & Hidehiko Ichimura, 2007. "What Really Happened to Consumption Inequality in the United States?," NBER Chapters, in: Hard-to-Measure Goods and Services: Essays in Honor of Zvi Griliches, pages 515-543, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Slesnick,Daniel T., 2001. "Consumption and Social Welfare," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521497206, January.
    9. Angus Deaton, 2010. "Price Indexes, Inequality, and the Measurement of World Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 5-34, March.
    10. Jeroen Smits & Roel Steendijk, 2015. "The International Wealth Index (IWI)," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 65-85, May.
    11. Graham, Liam & Oswald, Andrew J., "undated". "Hedonic Capital," Economic Research Papers 269638, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    12. repec:pri:rpdevs:presidential%20address%2017january%202010%20all.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States: 1967-2006," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 15-51, January.
    14. Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri, 2006. "Does Income Inequality Lead to Consumption Inequality? Evidence and Theory -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 163-193.
    15. Charles I. Jones & Peter J. Klenow, 2016. "Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2426-2457, September.
    16. Mark Aguiar & Mark Bils, 2015. "Has Consumption Inequality Mirrored Income Inequality?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(9), pages 2725-2756, September.
    17. Thomas Carver & Arthur Grimes, 2019. "Income or Consumption: Which Better Predicts Subjective Well‐Being?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 256-280, November.
    18. Grimes, Arthur & Oxley, Les & Tarrant, Nicholas, 2012. "Does Money Buy Me Love? Testing Alternative Measures of National Wellbeing," Motu Working Papers 291419, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    19. Jonathan Fisher & David S. Johnson & Timothy M. Smeeding, 2015. "Inequality of Income and Consumption in the U.S.: Measuring the Trends in Inequality from 1984 to 2011 for the Same Individuals," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 630-650, December.
    20. Grimes, Arthur & Hyland, Sean, 2015. "A New Cross Country Measure of Material Wellbeing and Inequality Methodology, Construction and Results," Motu Working Papers 290591, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    21. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2011. "Viewpoint: Further results on measuring the well‐being of the poor using income and consumption," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(1), pages 52-87, February.
    22. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    23. Atkinson, Anthony B., 2015. "Inequality: what can be done?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101810, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    24. James Foster & Luis Lopez-Calva & Miguel Szekely, 2005. "Measuring the Distribution of Human Development: methodology and an application to Mexico," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 5-25.
    25. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2012. "Identifying the Disadvantaged: Official Poverty, Consumption Poverty, and the New Supplemental Poverty Measure," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 111-136, Summer.
    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. John Janssen & Margaret Galt & Giles Bollinger, 2022. "New Zealand's Productivity Performance: Taking a Broader View," Treasury Analytical Notes Series an22/05, New Zealand Treasury.

    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. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2017. "Consumption and income inequality in the US since the 1960s," AEI Economics Working Papers 953873, American Enterprise Institute.
    2. Han, Jeehoon & Meyer, Bruce D. & Sullivan, James X., 2020. "Inequality in the joint distribution of consumption and time use," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    3. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2013. "Consumption and Income Inequality and the Great Recession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 178-183, May.
    4. Lichner, Ivan & Lyócsa, Štefan & Výrostová, Eva, 2022. "Nominal and discretionary household income convergence: The effect of a crisis in a small open economy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 18-31.
    5. Orazio Attanasio & Erik Hurst & Luigi Pistaferri, 2012. "The Evolution of Income, Consumption, and Leisure Inequality in The US, 1980-2010," NBER Working Papers 17982, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Orazio Attanasio & Erik Hurst & Luigi Pistaferri, 2014. "The Evolution of Income, Consumption, and Leisure Inequality in the United States, 1980–2010," NBER Chapters, in: Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures, pages 100-140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Giacomo De Giorgi & Luca Gambetti & Costanza Naguib, 2023. "Life-Cycle Inequality: the Black and White Differential," Diskussionsschriften dp2301, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    8. Grimes, Arthur & Hyland, Sean, 2015. "A New Cross Country Measure of Material Wellbeing and Inequality Methodology, Construction and Results," Motu Working Papers 290591, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    9. Esa Karonen & Mikko Niemelä, 2022. "Necessity-Rich, Leisure-Poor: The Long-Term Relationship Between Income Cohorts and Consumption Through Age-Period-Cohort Analysis," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 599-620, September.
    10. Thomas Carver & Arthur Grimes, 2019. "Income or Consumption: Which Better Predicts Subjective Well‐Being?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 256-280, November.
    11. Qingjie Xia & Shi Li & Lina Song, 2017. "Urban Consumption Inequality in China, 1995–2013," Working Papers id:12239, eSocialSciences.
    12. Vadym Lepetyuk & Christian A. Stoltenberg, 2012. "Reconciling consumption inequality with income inequality," Working Papers. Serie AD 2012-19, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    13. Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni Violante & Lichen Zhang, 2023. "More Unequal We Stand? Inequality Dynamics in the United States, 1967–2021," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 50, pages 235-266, October.
    14. Clementi,Fabio & Fabiani,Michele & Molini,Vasco & Schettino,Francesco, 2022. "Is Inequality Systematically Underestimated in Sub-Saharan Africa ? A Proposal toOvercome the Problem," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10058, The World Bank.
    15. Jonathan Fisher & David S. Johnson & Timothy M. Smeeding, 2015. "Inequality of Income and Consumption in the U.S.: Measuring the Trends in Inequality from 1984 to 2011 for the Same Individuals," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 630-650, December.
    16. Antràs, Pol & de Gortari, Alonso & Itskhoki, Oleg, 2017. "Globalization, inequality and welfare," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 387-412.
    17. Qingjie Xia & Shi Li & Lina Song, 2017. "Consumption Inequality in Urban China, 1995-2013," University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers 201719, University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP).
    18. Curtis, Chadwick & Garín, Julio & Lester, Robert, 2022. "Working, consuming, and dying: Quantifying the diversity in the american experience," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    19. Mian, A. & Sufi, A., 2016. "Who Bears the Cost of Recessions? The Role of House Prices and Household Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 255-296, Elsevier.
    20. John Sabelhaus & David Johnson & Stephen Ash & David Swanson & Thesia I. Garner & John Greenlees & Steve Henderson, 2014. "Is the Consumer Expenditure Survey Representative by Income?," NBER Chapters, in: Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures, pages 241-262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:bla:scotjp:v:67:y:2020:i:3:p:248-271. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sesssea.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.