Five Decades of Resource Shares and Individual Consumption Inequality in the UK

• Econometrics

Date and Location

Monday, October 31, 2022, 3:40 AM - 5:00 AM
Blue Room, 1113 Social Sciences and Humanities

Abstract

We estimate resource shares and individual expenditure in the UK over 1978 to 2019, in couples with 0,1 and 2 children. A person's resource share is the fraction of household expenditure that they get to spend on all goods. It measures their access to household resources, and is a time-varying function of characteristics.

Over this period, women’s labour-force participation, education and labour income rose very dramatically. We find a large increase in women’s resource shares over study period. However, only about half of the increase can be attributed to improving characteristics. The reason is simple: as the supply of these desirable marital characteristics increased, the return to them in terms of resource shares within the marriage (their price) decreased.