IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/iec/inveco/v32y2008i2p169-200.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequality, poverty and mobility: Choosing income or consumption as welfare indicators

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Gradín

    (Universidad de Vigo)

  • Olga Cantó

    (Universidad de Vigo)

  • Coral del Río

    (Universidad de Vigo)

Abstract

The economic literature has discussed at large about the best indicator of individual welfare: income or consumption. The implications of this choice are not only a matter for theoretical discussion but turn out to be very relevant for empirical analysis. Up to now, the debate has focused on the effects on distributional statics and avoided discussing or offering evidence of the effects on mobility or poverty dynamics. In this paper we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both resource measurements and analyze the effects of the choice on distributional dynamics by presenting empirical evidence on Spain obtained from a rotating longitudinal survey.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Gradín & Olga Cantó & Coral del Río, 2008. "Inequality, poverty and mobility: Choosing income or consumption as welfare indicators," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 32(2), pages 169-200, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:iec:inveco:v:32:y:2008:i:2:p:169-200
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.fundacionsepi.es/investigacion/revistas/paperArchive/may2008/v32i2a2.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Luis Ayala & Olga Cantó & Juan G. Rodríguez, 2011. "Poverty and the business cycle: The role of the intra-household distribution of unemployment," Working Papers 222, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    2. Javier Ballesteros Muñoz & Jorge Onrubia, 2022. "Régimen de tenencia de la vivienda habitual y desigualdad de la renta de los hogares españoles," Studies on the Spanish Economy eee2022-26, FEDEA.
    3. Terry Sicular & Yue Ximing & Björn Gustafsson & Li Shi, 2007. "The Urban–Rural Income Gap And Inequality In China," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(1), pages 93-126, March.
    4. Gradín, Carlos & Wu, Binbin, 2020. "Income and consumption inequality in China: A comparative approach with India," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    5. Álvarez-Verdejo, Encarnación & Estudillo-Martínez, María Dolores & Castillo-Gutiérrez, Sonia, 2012. "Estimación de la función de distribución y cuantiles en la población de pobres/Estimation of the Distribution Function and Quantiles for the Population of Poor," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 30, pages 1063(26.)-1, Diciembre.
    6. Maharjan, Keshav Lall & Joshi, Niraj Prakash, 2009. "Relationship between Income-poverty and Food insecurity in Rural Far-western Mid-hills of Nepal," MPRA Paper 35378, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Núñez Velázquez, José Javier, 2009. "Estado actual y nuevas aproximaciones a la medición de la pobreza/Current Status and New Approaches to the Measurement of Poverty," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 27, pages 325-346, Agosto.
    8. Torregrosa-Hetland, Sara, 2016. "Sticky Income Inequality In The Spanish Transition (1973-1990)," Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 39-80, March.
    9. Olga Cantó & Carlos Gradín & Coral Del Río, 2012. "Pobreza Crónica, Transitoria Y Recurrente En España," Revista de Economia Aplicada, Universidad de Zaragoza, Departamento de Estructura Economica y Economia Publica, vol. 20(1), pages 69-94, Spring.
    10. Radek Zdeněk & František Střeleček, 2012. "Income gap between rural and non-rural households — Case of the Czech Republic," Society and Economy, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 34(3), pages 469-488, September.
    11. Jonathan D. Fisher & David S. Johnson, 2020. "Inequality and Mobility over the Past Half-Century Using Income, Consumption, and Wealth," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth, pages 437-455, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Luis Ayala & Carolina Navarro & Mercedes Sastre, 2011. "Cross-country income mobility comparisons under panel attrition: the relevance of weighting schemes," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(25), pages 3495-3521.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    income distribution; sensitivity analysis; expenditure; mobility; poverty dynamics; Spain.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    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:iec:inveco:v:32:y:2008:i:2:p:169-200. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Isabel Sánchez-Seco (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.fundacionsepi.es/ .

    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.