Aspirations, health and the cost of inequality

Jeffrey Allen and Shankha Chakraborty

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2018, vol. 86, issue C, 144-164

Abstract: How does inequality motivate people and at what cost? In a model of perpetual youth, people have heterogeneous upward-looking aspirations. They value their consumption relative to the conditional mean of those above them in the distribution; their survival depends on health capital produced from time investment and health goods. Higher fundamental inequality, working through the aspirations gap, motivates people to work and save more. Economic outcomes improve but income and consumption inequality worsen because the poor have less capacity to respond on the labor market. By diverting resources from health production, aspirations also worsen mortality, especially for the poor. Though relative income has a strong negative effect on personal health, inequality has a weak effect on population health, explaining an empirical puzzle on the relative income and health gradient.

Keywords: Inequality; Aspirations; Consumption externality; Health; Grossman model; Relative income and health gradient; Heterogeneous agents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D91 I14 J20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Working Paper: Aspirations, Health and the Cost of Inequality (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:86:y:2018:i:c:p:144-164

DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2017.10.008

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