Abstract
David Johnson and Stephanie Shipp (1995)
"Trends In Inequality Using Consumer Expenditures: 1960 To
1993," Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research
Methods, American Statistical Association.
Although inequality of income has historically been the
predominant measure of well-being, recently there has been a
movement to expand consideration of well-being to include the
distribution of consumption (Slesnick (1993), Cutler and Katz
(1991)). In this paper, we examine inequality over time using
consumption-expenditure data from the U.S. Consumer
Expenditure (CE) Survey. Changes in the demographic
characteristics of families are examined to determine their
effect on the inequality of consumer expenditures.
Using data from the CE Survey, various measures of inequality
indices are examined for five time periods: 1960-61, 1972-73,
1980-81, 1989-90, and 1992-93. Our indices indicate that
inequality for individuals was fairly constant between
1960-61 and 1972-73, rose between 1972-73 and 1980-81,
widened considerably between 1980-81 and 1989-90, and fell
during the early 1990's. The mean log deviation
inequality measure is then decomposed by demographic
characteristics (family type and education). The main finding
of this decomposition is that most of the inequality is due
to within-group rather than between-group inequality and that
within-group inequality increased over the 30 year period.
Last Modified Date: July 19, 2008
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