Macroeconomic Covariates of Real Household Incomes in America

Martin Ravallion

Working Papers from Georgetown University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Household survey data for the U.S. spanning 30 years are used to study the co-movements between log real household incomes and standard macroeconomic indicators. The semi-elasticities of the income quantiles with respect to the macro indicators are found to vary substantially and non-monotonically across the distribution. The unemployment rate matters at all income levels, but especially so for the poorest, living at the estimated income floor. Inflation rates matter more at middle incomes. Recessions are poverty-increasing, but also skewness-decreasing, with implications for the political economy of redistribution. These complex distributional effects are obscured by standard scaler measures of income inequality. Classification- D31, E31, E32

Keywords: Unemployment; inflation; growth; poverty; inequality; skewness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2022-04-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv and nep-mac
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