IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/33745.html

Conspicuous Consumption, Social Status and Measures of Poverty – An Example

Author

Listed:
  • Marjit, Sugata
  • Mandal, Biswajit

Abstract

The existing literature on poverty has discussed about the conflict between income-based measure and nutrition-based measure. However, the role of social inequality in influencing individual’s consumption and inducing greater consumption of the so called status good has been relatively undermined. This paper attempts to show that in presence of inequality a status driven utility function reconciles the conflict between income based and nutrition based measures of poverty.

Suggested Citation

  • Marjit, Sugata & Mandal, Biswajit, 2011. "Conspicuous Consumption, Social Status and Measures of Poverty – An Example," MPRA Paper 33745, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Apr 2011.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:33745
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/33745/1/MPRA_paper_33745.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christian Ghiglino & Sanjeev Goyal, 2010. "Keeping Up with the Neighbors: Social Interaction in a Market Economy," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(1), pages 90-119, March.
    2. Beath, John & FitzRoy, Felix, 2007. "Status, Happiness, and Relative Income," IZA Discussion Papers 2658, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Ed Hopkins & Tatiana Kornienko, 2010. "Which Inequality? The Inequality of Endowments versus the Inequality of Rewards," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 106-137, August.
    4. Fafchamps, Marcel & Shilpi, Forhad, 2008. "Subjective welfare, isolation, and relative consumption," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 43-60, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Marjit, Sugata & Roy, Ranjan, 2010. "Conflicting Measures of Poverty and Inadequate Saving by the Poor – The Role of Status Driven Utility Function," MPRA Paper 27472, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Sugata Marjit & Lei Yang, 2015. "Accumulation with Malnutrition - The Role of Status Seeking Behavior," Discussion Papers Series 544, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    3. Marjit, Sugata & Santra, Sattwik & Hati, Koushik Kumar, 2014. "Does inequality affect the consumption patterns of the poor? – The role of “status seeking” behaviour," MPRA Paper 54118, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Marjit, Sugata & Roychowdhury, Punarjit, 2011. "Status, Poverty and Trade," MPRA Paper 33730, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Marjit, Sugata, 2012. "Conflicting Measures of Poverty and Inadequate Saving by the Poor," WIDER Working Paper Series 058, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-58 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Zhenhua Feng & Jaimie W. Lien & Jie Zheng, 2018. "Keeping up with the Neighbors: Social Interaction in a Production Economy," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 6(9), pages 1-14, September.
    8. Sugata Marjit, 2012. "Conflicting Measures of Poverty and Inadequate Saving by the Poor," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-058, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Marijke Verpoorten, 2014. "Growth, poverty and inequality in Rwanda: a broad perspective," Working Papers of LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance 490896, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance.
    10. Muhammad Faress Bhuiyan, 2018. "Life Satisfaction and Economic Position Relative to Neighbors: Perceptions Versus Reality," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 19(7), pages 1935-1964, October.
    11. Van Landeghem, Bert & Vandeplas, Anneleen, 2018. "The relationship between status and happiness: Evidence from the caste system in rural India," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 62-71.
    12. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2007. "The Economic Lives of the Poor," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 141-168, Winter.
    13. 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.
    14. David A. Weisbach, 2008. "What Does Happiness Research Tell Us About Taxation?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(S2), pages 293-324, June.
    15. Marcel Fafchamps & Forhad Shilpi, 2013. "Determinants of the Choice of Migration Destination," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(3), pages 388-409, June.
    16. Nora, Vladyslav & Winter, Eyal, 2024. "Exploiting social influence in networks," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(1), January.
    17. Aneel Karnani, 2009. "The Bottom of the Pyramid Strategy for Reducing Poverty: A Failed Promise," Working Papers 80, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    18. Rezaei, Sarah & Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Weitzel, Utz & Westbrock, Bastian, 2024. "Social preferences on networks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    19. Belhaj, Mohamed & Deroïan, Frédéric, 2013. "Strategic interaction and aggregate incentives," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 183-188.
    20. Jaikumar, Saravana & Singh, Ramendra & Sarin, Ankur, 2018. "‘I show off, so I am well off’: Subjective economic well-being and conspicuous consumption in an emerging economy," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 386-393.
    21. Richard P.C. Brown & Eliana V. Jimenez, 2008. "Remittances and Subjective Welfare in a Mixed-Motives Model: Evidence from Fiji," Discussion Papers Series 370, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    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:33745. 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.