IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nsr/escoed/escoe-dp-2018-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Democratic Measure of Household Income Growth: Theory and Application to the United Kingdom

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Aitken
  • Martin Weale

Abstract

This paper develops a price and quantity system of indicators structured round Atkinson's concept of inequality aversion. A democratic indicator of income growth, weighting each household's growth experience equally, is shown to result when Prais' democratic price index is used to deflate the geometric mean of equivalised household income. A welfare interpretation of the democratic indicator of income growth is provided and it is shown that, with heterogeneous but homothetic preferences, the deflator can serve as a common scaling social cost of living index when applied to income as well as to consumption. Application to United Kingdom household data suggests that, over the interval 2005/6-2015/6 democratic real equivalised household income grew by 0.20 per cent per annum while the plutocratic equivalent grew by 0.52 per cent per annum.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Aitken & Martin Weale, 2018. "A Democratic Measure of Household Income Growth: Theory and Application to the United Kingdom," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2018-02, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    • Handle: RePEc:nsr:escoed:escoe-dp-2018-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://escoe-website.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/13153654/ESCoE-DP-2018-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eduardo Ley, 2005. "Whose inflation? A characterization of the CPI plutocratic gap," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 57(4), pages 634-646, October.
    2. Angus Deaton, 2008. "Income, Health, and Well-Being around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 53-72, Spring.
    3. Newbery, David M, 1995. "The Distributional Impact of Price Changes in Hungary and the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(431), pages 847-863, July.
    4. Kehoe, Timothy J. & Levine, David K. & Romer, Paul M., 1990. "Determinacy of equilibria in dynamic models with finitely many consumers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-21, February.
    5. Martin L. Weitzman, 1976. "On the Welfare Significance of National Product in a Dynamic Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(1), pages 156-162.
    6. Atkinson, A B, 1997. "Bringing Income Distribution in from the Cold," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(441), pages 297-321, March.
    7. Layard, R. & Mayraz, G. & Nickell, S., 2008. "The marginal utility of income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(8-9), pages 1846-1857, August.
    8. Dale W. Jorgenson & J. Steven Landefeld & Paul Schreyer, 2014. "Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number jorg12-1, March.
    9. Peter ven de Ven & Anne Harrison & Barbara Fraumeni & Dale W. Jorgenson & Paul Schreyer, 2017. "Measuring Individual Economic Well-Being and Social Welfare within the Framework of the System of National Accounts," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63, pages 460-477, December.
    10. Amartya Sen, 1976. "Real National Income," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 43(1), pages 19-39.
    11. Oulton, Nicholas, 2008. "Chain indices of the cost-of-living and the path-dependence problem: An empirical solution," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 306-324, May.
    12. Daniel T. Slesnick, 1998. "Empirical Approaches to the Measurement of Welfare," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(4), pages 2108-2165, December.
    13. Redding, Stephen J. & Weinstein, David E., 2016. "A unified approach to estimating demand and welfare," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67681, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Samuelson, Paul A & Swamy, S, 1974. "Invariant Economic Index Numbers and Canonical Duality: Survey and Synthesis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(4), pages 566-593, September.
    15. James Banks & Richard Blundell & Arthur Lewbel, 1997. "Quadratic Engel Curves And Consumer Demand," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 527-539, November.
    16. Marc Fleurbaey, 2009. "Beyond GDP: The Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1029-1075, December.
    17. Pollak, Robert A., 1981. "The social cost of living index," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 311-336, June.
    18. Senghaas-Knobloch Eva, 2004. "Auftrag und Möglichkeiten der Internationalen Arbeitsorganisation (ILO) unter den Bedingungen der Globalisierung," Arbeit, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 236-247, September.
    19. Dale W. Jorgenson & J. Steven Landefeld & Paul Schreyer, 2014. "Introduction to "Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress"," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress, pages 1-16, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    21. J. A. Sefton & M. R. Weale, 2006. "The Concept of Income in a General Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 219-249.
    22. Jorgenson, Dale W. & Landefeld, J. Steven & Schreyer, Paul (ed.), 2014. "Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226121338, October.
    23. Jorgenson, Dale W, 1990. "Aggregate Consumer Behavior and the Measurement of Social Welfare," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(5), pages 1007-1040, September.
    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. Martin Weale & Andrew Aitken, 2021. "On Household Costs Indices," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2021-16, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    2. Diane Coyle & Leonard Nakamura, 2022. "Time Use, Productivity, and Household-centric Measurement of Welfare in the Digital Economy," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 42, pages 165-186, Spring.
    3. Diane Coyle & Leonard I. Nakamura, 2019. "Toward a Framework for Time Use, Welfare, and Household Centric Economic Measurement," Working Papers 19-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    4. Bart Los & Marcel P. Timmer, 2020. "Measuring Bilateral Exports of Value Added: A Unified Framework," NBER Chapters, in: Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts, pages 389-421, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Andrew Aitken & Martin Weale, 2022. "Measuring National Income Growth Democratically: Methods and Estimates for the United Kingdom," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2022-17, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    6. Marina Tkalec, 0000. "Inflation response to the COVID-19 pandemic and government interventions: Evidence from EU-27," Proceedings of Economics and Finance Conferences 14216251, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    7. Diane Coyle & David Nguyen, 2020. "Free goods and economic welfare," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2020-18, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    8. Martin Weale & Andrew Aitken, 2021. "Deflation of Distributional National Accounts," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2021-01, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).

    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. Peter ven de Ven & Anne Harrison & Barbara Fraumeni & Dale W. Jorgenson & Paul Schreyer, 2017. "Measuring Individual Economic Well-Being and Social Welfare within the Framework of the System of National Accounts," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63, pages 460-477, December.
    2. Marc Fleurbaey, 2009. "Beyond GDP: The Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1029-1075, December.
    3. Romina Boarini & Marc Fleurbaey & Fabrice Murtin & Paul Schreyer, 2022. "Well‐being during the Great Recession: new evidence from a measure of multi‐dimensional living standards with heterogeneous preferences," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(1), pages 104-138, January.
    4. Paul Schreyer, 2021. "Framing Measurement Beyond GDP," CEPA Working Papers Series WP172021, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    5. Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio, 2017. "A Fairness Justification of Utilitarianism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 1261-1276, July.
    6. Hillinger, Claude, 2008. "Measuring Real Value and Inflation," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 2, pages 1-26.
    7. Koen Decancq & Marc Fleurbaey & Erik Schokkaert, 2015. "Happiness, Equivalent Incomes and Respect for Individual Preferences," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82, pages 1082-1106, December.
    8. Abdelkrim Araar & Paolo Verme, 2019. "Prices and Welfare," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-030-17423-1, December.
    9. Brian Nolan, 2020. "The Median Versus Inequality-Adjusted GNI as Core Indicator of ‘Ordinary’ Household Living Standards in Rich Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 150(2), pages 569-585, July.
    10. Nicholas Oulton, 2023. "The effect of changes in the terms of trade on GDP and welfare: A Divisia approach to the System of National Accounts," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 91(4), pages 261-282, July.
    11. Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh & Miklós Antal, 2014. "Evaluating Alternatives to GDP as Measures of Social Welfare and Progress. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 56," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47188, October.
    12. Nicholas Outlon, 2019. "GDP is a measure of output, not welfare. Or, HOS meets the SNA," Discussion Papers 1906, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    13. Piera Mazzoleni & Elisa Pagani & Federico Perali, 2023. "On the Curvature Properties of “Long” Social Welfare Functions," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-14, March.
    14. Marko Ledić & Ivica Rubil, 2021. "Beyond Wage Gap, Towards Job Quality Gap: The Role of Inter-Group Differences in Wages, Non-Wage Job Dimensions, and Preferences," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(2), pages 523-561, June.
    15. Olivier Bargain, 2017. "Welfare analysis and redistributive policies," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(4), pages 393-419, December.
    16. Oulton, Nicholas, 2015. "Space-time (In)consistency in the national accounts: causes and cures," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86285, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. David Donaldson & Krishna Pendakur, 2012. "Index-number tests and the common-scaling social cost-of-living index," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(3), pages 407-429, March.
    18. Carvalho, Diogo Baerlocher & Siqueira, Rozane Bezerra de & Nogueira, José Ricardo Bezerra, 2013. "Características Distributivas e Impacto de Reformas Tributárias Sobre o Bem-Estar das Famílias no Brasil," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 67(3), September.
    19. Hulten, Charles R., 2010. "Growth Accounting," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 987-1031, Elsevier.
    20. Avner Offer, 2000. "Economic Welfare Measurements and Human Well-Being, [revised version, March 2000]," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _034, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Real Income; Inequality Aversion; Welfare Indicator; Cost of Living;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nsr:escoed:escoe-dp-2018-02. 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: ESCoE Centre Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/escoeuk.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.