IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/105461.html

Inflation heterogeneity and its impact on inequality: evidence from the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Tavares, Francisco

Abstract

Aggregate inflation measures such as the Consumer Price Index seek to capture the impact on households consumption possibilities of changes in prices over time and are generally assumed as representative of all consumers. This is only true if households have all the same consumption patterns. Based on household level microdata, we construct specific household baskets of consumption and calculate the inflation for each one. By comparing Plutocratic and Democratic indexes, and inflation between groups of income, we conclude that households experienced different inflation rates, with the poorer suffering more with the loss in the purchasing power. The potential impacts of these findings on Fiscal and Monetary Policy show that around 1.77 million households could be paying federal income taxes when they should not; Social Security benefits could be up to 9.70% higher for some households; Federal Funds Rates would be 0.8 percentage points higher, based on a Taylor type rule, if FED used a Democratic core inflation index.

Suggested Citation

  • Tavares, Francisco, 2021. "Inflation heterogeneity and its impact on inequality: evidence from the United States," MPRA Paper 105461, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:105461
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/105461/1/MPRA_paper_105461.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert T. Michael, 1975. "Variation Across Household in the Rate of Inflation," NBER Working Papers 0074, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Argente, David & Lee, Munseob & Moreira, Sara, 2018. "Innovation and product reallocation in the great recession," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 1-20.
    3. Bart Hobijn & Kristin Mayer & Carter Stennis & Giorgio Topa, 2009. "Household inflation experiences in the U.S.: a comprehensive approach," Working Paper Series 2009-19, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    4. Mario Izquierdo & Eduardo Ley & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2003. "The Plutocratic Gap in the CPI: Evidence from Spain," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 50(1), pages 1-7.
    5. Brinca, Pedro & Faria-e-Castro, Miguel & Ferreira, Miguel H. & Holter, Hans A. & Nóbrega, Valter, 2025. "The nonlinear effects of fiscal policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 252(C).
    6. Eleanor M. Page Snyder, 1961. "Cost of Living Indexes for Special Classes of Consumers," NBER Chapters, in: The Price Statistics of the Federal Goverment, pages 337-372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Morne Oosthuizen, 2007. "Consumer Price Inflation across the Income Distribution in South Africa," Working Papers 07129, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    8. Hagemann, Robert P, 1982. "The Variability of Inflation Rates across Household Types," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 14(4), pages 494-510, November.
    9. Bart Hobijn & David Lagakos, 2005. "Inflation Inequality In The United States," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 51(4), pages 581-606, December.
    10. Michael J. Boskin, 1998. "Consumer Prices, the Consumer Price Index, and the Cost of Living," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 3-26, Winter.
    11. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    12. Xavier Jaravel, 2019. "The Unequal Gains from Product Innovations: Evidence from the U.S. Retail Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 715-783.
    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. Nasir,Muhammad & Kishwar,Shabana & Moritz Meyer & Oscar Eduardo Barriga Cabanillas, 2024. "Losing to Inflation : Unmasking the Unequal Price Effect of Inflation across Households," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11011, The World Bank.

    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. Selçuk Gemicioğlu & Burça Kızılırmak & Uğur Akkoç, 2024. "Relative contributions of indirect taxes and inflation on inequality: What does the Turkish data reveal?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 286-309, February.
    2. Petr Janský & Pavel Hait, 2016. "Inflation Differentials among Czech Households," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2016(1), pages 71-84.
    3. Carlos Garcimartín & Jhonatan Astudillo & André Martínez, 2021. "Inflation and income distribution in Central America, Mexico, Panama, and the Dominican Republic," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 315-339, February.
    4. Alberto Cavallo, 2024. "Inflation with Covid Consumption Baskets," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 72(2), pages 902-917, June.
    5. Degiannakis, Stavros & Delis, Panagiotis & Filis, George, 2025. "Disaggregated inflation rates: Some preliminary economic analysis for Greece," MPRA Paper 127227, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Morne Oosthuizen, 2013. "Inflation Inequality In South Africa," Working Papers 13158, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    7. Ruiz-Castillo, Javier & Ley, Eduardo & Izquierdo, Mario, 2002. "Distributional aspects of the quality change bias in the CPI: evidence from Spain," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 137-144, June.
    8. Yumin Hu & Luca Macedoni & Mingzhi (Jimmy) Xu, 2025. "Inequality and Market Power: Evidence from the United States and China," CESifo Working Paper Series 12181, CESifo.
    9. Dichev, Ilia D. & Qian, Jingyi, 2022. "The benefits of transaction-level data: The case of NielsenIQ scanner data," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1).
    10. Abildgren, Kim & Kuchler, Andreas, 2021. "Revisiting the inflation perception conundrum," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    11. Collard, Fabrice & Boissay, Frédéric & Galì, Jordi & Manea, Cristina, 2021. "Monetary Policy and Endogenous Financial Crises," TSE Working Papers 21-1277, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2023.
    12. Jake D. Orchard, 2025. "Non-homothetic Demand Shifts and Inflation Inequality," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2025-085, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Carola Frydman & Raven Molloy, 2024. "A Real Great Compression: Inflation and Inequality in the 1940s," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic History of American Inequality: New Evidence and Perspectives, pages 45-84, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Okidi, John A. & Nsubuga, Vincent, 2010. "Inflation Differentials Among Ugandan Households: 1997 - 2007," Research Series 150482, Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC).
    15. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2017. "Did the Cost of Living Rise Faster for the Rural Poor?," Working Papers 1091, Economic Research Forum, revised 05 Apr 2017.
    16. Biljana Jovanovic & Marko Josimovski, 2021. "Income-specific inflation rates and the effects of monetary policy: the case of North Macedonia," Working Papers 2021-01, National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia.
    17. Kaplan, Greg & Schulhofer-Wohl, Sam, 2017. "Inflation at the household level," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 19-38.
    18. Sutirtha Bandyopadhyay & Bharat Ramaswami, 2022. "The representative agent bias in cost of living indices," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 155-178, January.
    19. Goni, Edwin & Lopez, Humberto & Serven, Luis, 2006. "Getting realabout inequality : evidence from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3815, The World Bank.
    20. Arden Finn & Murray Leibbrandt & Morné Oosthuizen, 2014. "Poverty, Inequality, and Prices in Post-Apartheid South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-127, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    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:pra:mprapa:105461. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.