Income, expenditure and the living standards of UK households

Despite the widespread use of income as a measure of household welfare, there is much to recommend the use of consumption. Indeed, standard economic arguments suggest that consumption expenditure will better reflect expected lifetime resources and many economists have been unequivocal in advocating its use. Slesnick (1993), for example, suggests that ‘From a theoretical perspective it is more appropriate to evaluate poverty using a consumption based measure of household welfare’. Cutler and Katz (1992) state that ‘Economic theory suggests that permanent income or consumption is a more accurate measure of the distribution of resources than is current income’. Poterba (1989) argues that `If households base their spending plans on their expected lifetime income, then consumption provides a more accurate measure of resources than does annual income’.

Income risk and consumption inequality: a simulation study

This paper assesses the accuracy of decomposing income risk into permanent and transitory components using income and consumption data. We develop a specific approximation to the optimal consumption growth rule and use Monte Carlo evidence to show that this approximation can provide a robust method for decomposing income risk. The availability of asset data enables the use of a more accurate approximation allowing for partial self-insurance against permanent shocks. We show that the use of data on median asset holdings corrects much of the error in the simple approximation which assumes no self-insurance against permanent shocks.income risk, inequality, approximation methods, con-

Imputing consumption in the PSID using food demand estimates from the CEX

This paper assesses the accuracy of decomposing income risk into permanent and transitory components using income and consumption data. We develop a specific approximation to the optimal consumption growth rule and use Monte Carlo evidence to show that this approximation can provide a robust method for decomposing income risk. The availability of asset data enables the use of a more accurate approximation allowing for partial sef-insurance against permanent shocks. We show that the use of data on median asset holdings corrects much of the error in the simple approximation which assumes no self-insurance against permanent shocks.

Consumption inequality and partial insurance

This paper describes the transmission of income inequality into consumption inequality and in so doing investigates the degree of insurance to income shocks. It combines panel data on income from the PSID with consumption data from repeated CEX cross-sections and distinguishes between permanent and transitory income shocks. We find some partial insurance of permanent income shocks with more insurance possibilities for the college educated and those nearing retirement. We find little evidence against full insurance for transitory income shocks except among low income households. Tax and welfare benefits are found to play an important role in insuring permanent shocks. Adding durable expenditures to the consumption measure suggests that durable replacement is an important insurance mechanism, especially for transitory income shocks.

Decomposing Changes in Income Risk Using Consumption Data

We develop a new approach to the decomposition of income risk within a nonstationary model of intertemporal choice. The approach allows for changes in income risk over the life-cycle and with the business cycle. It requires only repeated cross-section data and can allow for mixtures of persistent and transitory components in the dynamic process for income. Evidence from a stochastic simulation of consumption choices in a nonstationarity environment is used to show the robustness of the method for decomposing income risk. The approach is used to investigate the changes in income risk in Britain across the inequality growth period from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Peaks in the variance of permanent shocks are shown to occur in the middle of the 1980s and the early 1990s.income risk, consumption, nonstationarity, inequality

Partial insurance, information and consumption dynamics

This paper uses panel data on household consumption and income to evaluate the degree of insurance to income shocks. Our aim is to describe the transmission of income inequality into consumption inequality. Our framework nests the special cases of self-insurance and the complete markets assumption. We assess the degree of insurance over and above self-insurance through savings by contrasting shifts in the cross-sectional distribution of income growth with shifts in the cross-sectional distribution of consumption growth, and analyzing the way these two measures of household welfare correlate over time. We combine panel data on income from the PSID with consumption data from repeated CEX cross-sections in a structural way, i.e. using conventional demand analysis rather than reduced form imputation procedures. Our results point to some partial insurance but reject the complete markets restriction. We find a greater degree of insurance for transitory shocks and differences in the degree of insurance over time and across education. We also document the importance of durables and of taxes and transfers as a means of insurance.

Walter Christaller’s research on regional and rural development planning during World War II

The goals of this study were to describe and evaluate Christaller's research on regional and rural planning during World War II. His research was analyzed by identifying ideas from his pre-war studies that were basic to his war research, by piecing together theoretical perspectives from sources from 1940-1945, and by identifying links between those studies and his research on central places. It was shown that Christaller's research contributed to plans facilitating German Lebensraum policy and the objectives of Himmler's Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom, that he built the conceptual and theoretical frameworks used in his war research on his earlier theories of central places, administrative regions, and rural settlement change, that he used his theoretical ideas to confront basic problems in planning and human geography, and that he offered innovative solutions including (1) generalization of his original theory by the addition of a mixed hierarchical principle, (2) development of normative systems of urban-centered administrative-planning regions both for the German Empire and in more detail for western Poland, (3) development of a model of metropolitan regions, and (4) development of a settlement system based theory of rural development.Elektronische Version von 200

The development of tentative norms for soccer skill tests on the college level.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

L1 and L2 dialects : where the action is

Este estudio analiza una situación de inmigración internacional y\ud nacional en la que hablantes de español mexicanos y sus\ud descendientes se han trasladado a zonas del sur de Michigan, en la\ud región de los grandes lagos de los Estados Unidos. Se trata, en su\ud mayor parte, de migrantes agricultores, procedentes de México o de\ud Texas y que se han asentado en Michigan.This study considers such contact in an international/national\ud immigration situation in which Mexican Spanish speakers and their\ud descendents have moved ro areas in southern Michigan, in the Great\ud Lakes area of the United States. They are migrant agricultural\ud workers, from Mexico or Texas, who have settled in Michigan