Consumption
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Luigi Pistaferri
Leader: Luigi Pistaferri
The study of poverty and inequality has long privileged measures of income over those of consumption. Does this lead us awry? The purpose of the Consumption RG, which the CPI has founded only recently, is to monitor trends in consumption-based poverty and inequality and to understand the sources of those trends. The analyses within this RG will focus on the individual components of consumption because they are not always moving in lockstep. For example, inequality in the ownership of major durables has been declining, whereas inequality in nondurables, services, and food consumption has been increasing. The trends in food consumption are further complicated, however, because coloric intake is not growing more unequal, partly as a result of assistance provided by SNAP. The main rationale for setting up this RG is that patterns of consumption, especially among the poor, appear to be changing in complicated ways that require careful study and documenting. Although in principle the well-being of households may be better assessed with consumption than income, a consumption-based approach is thus complicated by the very different trends across the components of consumption and by difficulties in knowing the value assigned to the quality of goods that are consumed.
Featured Examples
Consumption - CPI Research
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| Gender Inequality in Product Markets: When and How Status Beliefs Transfer to Products | Elise Tak, Shelley Correll, Sarah Soule |
Gender Inequality in Product Markets: When and How Status Beliefs Transfer to ProductsAuthor: Elise Tak, Shelley Correll, Sarah SoulePublisher: Social Forces Date: 12/2019 This paper develops and evaluates a theory of status belief transfer, the process by which gender status beliefs differentially affect the evaluations of products made by men and women. We conduct three online experiments to evaluate this theory. In Study 1, we gathered 50 product categories from a large online retailer and had participants rate each product’s association with femininity and masculinity. We find evidence of the pervasiveness of gender-typing in product markets. In Studies 2 and 3, we simulate male-typed and female-typed product markets (craft beer and cupcakes, respectively). In the male-typed product market, a craft beer described as produced by a woman is evaluated more negatively than the same product described as produced by a man. Consistent with our predictions, we further find that if the beer is conferred external status via an award, the evaluation of the beer made by a woman improves by a greater magnitude than the same beer made by a man. In the female-typed product market of cupcakes, the producer’s gender does not affect ratings. Together, the two studies provide evidence of an asymmetric negative bias: products made by women are disadvantaged in male-typed markets, but products made by men are not disadvantaged in female-typed markets. These studies also provide compelling evidence of status belief transfer from producers to their products. We draw out the implications of these findings and suggest ways that gender biases in product markets can be reduced. |
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| Children, Time Allocation and Consumption Insurance | Richard Blundell, Luigi Pistaferri, Itay Saporta-Eksten |
Children, Time Allocation and Consumption InsuranceAuthor: Richard Blundell, Luigi Pistaferri, Itay Saporta-EkstenPublisher: NBER Date: 11/2017 We consider the life cycle choices of a household that in each period decides how much to consume and how to allocate spouses' time to work, leisure, and childcare. In an environment with uncertainty, the allocation of goods and time over the life cycle also serves the purpose of smoothing marginal utility in response to shocks. We combine data on consumption, spouses' wages, hours of work, and time spent with children to estimate the sensitivity of consumption and time allocation to transitory and permanent wage shocks. These structural parameters describe the ability of household to self-insure in response to shocks. We find that behavioral responses to wage shocks depend on the presence of young children. We also find that labor supply cross-responses depend on three counteracting forces: complementarity of leisure time, substitutability of time in the production of child services, and added worker effects. |
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| Inequality and Mobility Using Income, Consumption, and Wealth for the Same Individuals | Jonathan Fisher, David Johnson, Jonathan P. Latner, Timothy Smeeding, Jeffrey Thompson |
Inequality and Mobility Using Income, Consumption, and Wealth for the Same IndividualsAuthor: Jonathan Fisher, David Johnson, Jonathan P. Latner, Timothy Smeeding, Jeffrey ThompsonPublisher: RSF Date: 11/2016 Recent studies of economic inequality almost always separately examine income inequality, consumption inequality, and wealth inequality, and hence, these studies miss the important synergy between the three measures explicit in the life-cycle budget constraint. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we study inequality in three dimensions, focusing on the conjoint distributions of income, consumption, and wealth for the same individuals. We find that the trends in inequality in income, consumption, and wealth similarly increase between 1999 and 2013. We examine the pairwise distributions of our measures using the average propensity to consume and the wealth-income ratios. Using the longitudinal nature of the PSID, we follow people over this period and find mobility is similar using income, consumption, and wealth. We conclude that while all three types of inequality are rising, wealth increasingly acts as a buffer to cushion income changes, which could reduce mobility—both intra- and inter-generational mobility. |
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| Consumption and the Great Recession | Luigi Pistaferri, Ivaylo Petev |
Consumption and the Great RecessionAuthor: Luigi Pistaferri, Ivaylo PetevPublisher: Date: 10/2012 The particular trauma of severe downturns is that declining consumer spending, itself a reaction to the economy's contraction, also undermines the prospects for recovery. Consumption is, in other words, a fundamental determinant of business cycles - a kind of litmus test of economic health. But it's not just an important determinant of future economic performance. We also look to consumption as an omnibus measure of the set of socioeconomic conditions that underlie consumer behavior, such as job opportunities, price fluctuations, access to credit, and financial security. In this recession brief, we offer an interpretation of recent consumption data in order to determine the extent of the economic damage and its unequal distribution across the American populace. |
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| Conspicuous Consumption and Expenditure Visibility: Measurement and Application | Ori Heffetz |
Conspicuous Consumption and Expenditure Visibility: Measurement and ApplicationAuthor: Ori HeffetzPublisher: Date: |
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consumption - CPI Affiliates
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Luigi Pistaferri |
Consumption Research Group Leader, Professor of Economics, "Ralph Landau" Senior Fellow at SIEPR |
Stanford University |
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Robert H. Frank |
H. J. Louis Professor of Management, Professor of Economics |
Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University |
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Timothy M. Smeeding |
Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Economics and Public Adminstration, Former Director, Institute for Research on Poverty |
University of Wisconsin-Madison |
Consumption - Other Research
| Title | Author | Media | |
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| Consumption and Income Inequality in the U.S. Since the 1960s | Bruce D. Meyer, James X. Sullivan |
Consumption and Income Inequality in the U.S. Since the 1960sAuthor: Bruce D. Meyer, James X. SullivanPublisher: NBER Date: 08/2017 Official income inequality statistics indicate a sharp rise in inequality over the past five decades. These statistics do not accurately reflect inequality because income is poorly measured, particularly in the tails of the distribution, and current income differs from permanent income, failing to capture the consumption paid for through borrowing and dissaving and the consumption of durables such as houses and cars. We examine income inequality between 1963 and 2014 using the Current Population Survey and consumption inequality between 1960 and 2014 using the Consumer Expenditure Survey. We construct improved measures of consumption, focusing on its well-measured components that are reported at a high and stable rate relative to national accounts. While overall income inequality (as measured by the 90/10 ratio) rose over the past five decades, the rise in overall consumption inequality was small. The patterns for the two measures differ by decade, and they moved in opposite directions after 2006. Income inequality rose in both the top and bottom halves of the distribution, but increases in consumption inequality are only evident in the top half. The differences are also concentrated in single parent families and single individuals. Although changing demographics can account for some of the changes in consumption inequality, they account for little of the changes in income inequality. Consumption smoothing cannot explain the differences between income and consumption at the very bottom, but the declining quality of income data can. Asset price changes likely account for some of the differences between the measures in recent years for the top half of the distribution.
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| Do Rising Top Incomes Lead to Increased Borrowing in the Rest of the Distribution? | Jeffrey Thompson |
Do Rising Top Incomes Lead to Increased Borrowing in the Rest of the Distribution?Author: Jeffrey ThompsonPublisher: Federal Reserve Board of Governors Date: 05/2016 One potential consequence of rising concentration of income at the top of the distribution isincreased borrowing, as less affluent households attempt to maintain standards of living with less income. This paper explores the “keeping up with the Joneses” phenomenon using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. Specifically, it examines the responsiveness of payment-to-income ratios for different debt types at different parts of the income distribution to changes in the income thresholds at the 95th and 99th percentiles. The analysis provides some evidence indicating that household debt payments are responsive to rising top incomes. Middle and upper middle income households take on more housing-related debt and have higher housing debt payment to income ratios in places with higher top income levels. Among households at the bottom of the income distribution there is a decline in non-mortgage borrowing and debt payments in areas with rising top-income levels, consistent with restrictions in the supply of credit. The analysis also consistently shows that 95th percentile income has a greater influence on borrowing and debt payment across in the rest of the distribution than the more affluent 99th percentile level. |