Consumption, Needs and Inequality
发现美国战后消费不平等指数实际上在下降，与基于收入的不平等研究结论不同，原因在于收入与支出分布差异以及考虑了家庭异质性需求。
Most empirical studies demonstrating a U-turn in inequality in the United States are based on the distribution of income. However, utility is derived from the consumption of goods and services and there are many reasons to expect the distribution of expenditure to be different from the distribution of income. The author demonstrates that consumption-based inequality indexes actually decrease over the postwar era. This conclusion differs from the stylized facts because of differences in the income and expenditure distributions. Differences also arise from the inclusion of equivalence scales to account for the different needs of heterogeneous households. Copyright 1994 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.