Individual welfare analysis: a tale of consumption, time use and preference heterogeneity

Obermeier, Tim (2023) Individual welfare analysis: a tale of consumption, time use and preference heterogeneity. CEP Discussion Papers (CEPDP1954). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

How accurately does household income reflect the well-being of the individuals living within the household? Looking at household income does not take unequal consumption sharing within families, the value of time use (leisure and housework) and preference heterogeneity into account. I build a model of family decision-making and the marriage market which jointly captures these aspects and estimate the model based on British time use data. I use the estimated model to study poverty and inequality based on the individual-level Money-Metric Welfare Index (MMWI). The main result is that only 59% of individuals who are poor in terms of the MMWI ('welfare-poor') are also income-poor, suggesting that the conventional focus on income misses a substantial fraction of the welfare-poor. I find that accounting for unobserved preference heterogeneity is an important factor in assessing individual welfare. From an aggregate perspective, inequality within families accounts for 18% of overall welfare inequality, and heterogeneity in economies of scale across households account for 23% of welfare inequality. Finally, to illustrate the policy relevance of individual welfare measures, I study how minimum wage increases affect welfare-poverty in this framework.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion...
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
JEL classification:	E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment > E21 - Macroeconomics: Consumption; Saving; Aggregate Physical and Financial Consumer Wealth I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I32 - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D13 - Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
Date Deposited:	16 Jan 2024 14:51
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2024 04:41
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/121303

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