THE STANDARD OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES

A common approach to the evaluation of the standard of living is based on a function of real income. In the United States this often takes the form of CPI-deflated mean household income. Material well-being is more appropriately evaluated using a consumption-based index. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys we find that real mean income provides an inaccurate representation of the level and trend of the standard of living relative to real per equivalent total expenditure in the postwar United States. The differences between real income and real total expenditure per household equivalent member are found at all levels of aggregation.     

Prices and Regional Variation in Welfare

One would expect regional differences in prices to influence conclusions concerning levels and distributions of well-being. Although there is anecdotal evidence of significant price dispersion across regions, there is no governmental source of data that measures differences in price levels. In this paper I integrate estimates of regional prices with expenditure data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys to assess the influence of price differences on living standards in the United States. While prices have little effect on inequality, estimates of poverty and the standard of living change substantially with the inclusion of regional price variation.     

Consumption and labor supply

We present a new econometric model of aggregate demand and labor supply for the United States. We also analyze the allocation full wealth among time periods for households distinguished by a variety of demographic characteristics. The model is estimated using micro-level data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys supplemented with price information obtained from the Consumer Price Index. An important feature of our approach is that aggregate demands and labor supply can be represented in closed form while accounting for the substantial heterogeneity in behavior that is found in household-level data. As a result, we are able to explain the patterns of aggregate demand and labor supply in the data despite using a parametrically parsimonious specification.